Family a Barrier to Women Moving Ahead
In empowering women in India, one can’t separate
social issues from economic issues, said Ankhi Das, Facebook’s public policy
director for India, South & Central Asia.
“We commissioned a study which found that the family
is a barrier to women moving ahead in India. For the most part, families are
not supportive when a woman wants to go out and start a business,” she said.
Speaking at The Economic Times Women’s Forum in
Mumbai on Friday, Das said in their early education, girls were usually pushed
to the humanities stream rather than science, which contributes to the lack of
women in technology.
Facebook, for its part, is doing its best to
encourage women in business, particularly in technology startups, with tailored
programs like ‘SheMeansBusiness’ and ‘SheLeadsTech’.
Launched in 2016, the SheMeansBusiness programme has
organised a series of workshops in 126 cities across 16 states so far, training
over 15,000 women. These included smaller cities like Ranchi, where 2,500 women
attended, and Raipur, where 1,000 have been trained in the basics of starting a
small business. SheLeadsTech, on the other hand, is focused on woman-founded
startups.
“Of the $5 billion that had flown into startups in
India, only $168 million had gone to woman-founded startups. We are trying to
rectify this stark inequality,” said Das.
Dibeyendu.Ganguly
ET19MAR18
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