As part of a research project funded by the University of Westminster’s Participatory Research Fund allocation, academics from Westminster Business School have developed an online guide for Social Enterprises interested in gender empowerment, in collaboration with Social Enterprise UK, the UK's membership body for social enterprises.
The guide is a resource for social enterprises interested in gender empowerment practices to support the women they employ and their female beneficiaries. The project is being led by Dr Maria Granados with Dr Lilian Miles, Dr Anastasia Alexeeva and Dr Vincent Rich as co-investigators.
It is meant to be an easy-to-use guide, which aims to increase awareness of gender issues and provide examples of gender empowerment practices which social enterprises can choose to adopt. Importantly, the guide outlines suggested indicators that can be used to measure the impact of social enterprise practices, and identifies the potential challenges which can arise in the process of empowering female employees.
This project builds on the important work that the University of Westminster has already done to have been awarded the Social Enterprise Gold mark for the second year in a row. This is an internationally recognised accreditation and provides an independent guarantee that the University of Westminster has met sector-agreed criteria and is operating as a genuine social enterprise which is committed to creating positive social change.
Speaking about the project, Dr Miles, said: “Recent research has argued that social enterprises hold great potential in empowering women and contributing to gender equality. An example of such research is by Mark Richardson and colleagues titled Activist to Entrepreneur: The role of social enterprise in supporting women's empowerment in the UK. Our research clarifies what empowering women means for social enterprises and identifies the practices which hold potential to empower women”.
Dr Alexeeva added: "Many social enterprises are working to address gender inequality. We have discovered a number of powerful ways in which they support women’s empowerment: creating jobs; providing training and development opportunities; and enabling social change. Our study increases awareness of gender issues and most importantly provides indicators that can be used to measure the impact of women's empowerment practices adopted by social enterprises."
Find out more about Social Enterprise at the University of Westminster.
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