Enhancing Opportunities for Women's Enterprises Vietnam EOWE Vietnam The “Enhancing Opportunities for Women’s Enterprises” (EOWE) programme will advance women’s economic participation and selfreliance in Kenya and Vietnam by creating a conducive environment for female entrepreneurship as a vehicle for change. In 2014, SNV programmes have increased incomes and economic participation of 200,000 women in Kenya and Vietnam. With nearly 50 years of experience in women’s economic empowerment, we have learnt that economic growth alone is not enough to address gender inequality; the structures that underpin them have to be addressed: women and girls should be able to expand their economic opportunities, have access to resources and participate in decision making. Without these, the structures that cause inequality remain intact. A growing body of literature demonstrates the profound impact of women’s empowerment on human and socio-economic development, benefitting societies at large. In the agriculture and renewable energy sectors, where a significant share of rural women are engaged in economic activities, inequality is manifested most profoundly in income distribution and control of resources, division of labour and associated time burdens, decision-making power, gender-based violence, and restrictions in socio-economic and physical mobility. Our intervention model is built on the premise that political and legislative environments continue to be favourable for gender-equitable economic participation. Additionally, the changes we aim to influence require initiative from actors involved. We assume that there are sufficient incentives for all actors, including men, to engage and change behaviours. Most importantly, we premise that women’s economic contribution to their families, especially where there is a male head of household, will provide the incentive for men to share decision-making power with women. We premise that empowered women will continue to challenge gender

norms and values that will in turn benefit more women, while women’s success in leadership will reinforce positive gender norms and lead to the emergence of new relationships between men and women and their positions within institutions. Inspired by SNV’s global practice on gender in Agriculture, namely balancing benefits in agriculture and Renewable Energy, namely health and wealth from clean energy, SNV propose an integrated strategy, tailored to the target group’s needs and capacities, and

complementarity with ongoing initiatives.

These are:

• Increasing capacity of government actors to implement and localise female entrepreneurshipfriendly

policies and institutions.

• Increasing capacity of local actors, including CSOs, to create bottom-up pressure for women’s economic

empowerment and leverage existing policy frameworks to enhance the enabling environment.

• Challenging gender norms inhibiting women’s access to economic opportunities through behavioural change.

• Increasing women’s capacity and confidence to lead successful businesses. EOWE will target:

• National-level organisations (listed under actors) for capacity to implement gender-sensitive laws and inform the rules of the game for female businesses.

• National and local-level CSOs to initiate advocacy on gender norms and demand for implementation of gender-sensitive policies.

• Existing and new women-led enterprises in agriculture and renewable energy value chains for increased business performance.

• Other value chain service providers for access to resources and assets, leadership capacity, financial services, and market integration.

• Local sub grantees to implement programmes and institute good M&E system for shared learning and adapting actions.