Women empowerment with digital tools, a prominent topic, was discussed at the APEC Women Connect Virtual Workshop 2022 on 22 July. We are honored to have speakers from UN Women, International Telecommunications Union, APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), B20 Indonesia Women in Business Action Council, BRICS Women's Business Alliance (WBA), International Association of Women, Indonesia Business Coalition for Women Empowerment, and others from the public and private sectors.
The event set a platform for us to exchange ideas, provide recommendations, and promote solutions to address the digital gender gap, particularly since COVID-19. In this workshop, the most popular three words shared by speakers are “education”, “sharing”, and “inclusive”, echoing the theme of APEC 2022 - “Open, Connect and Balance”.
Thailand's policy priority for APEC 2022 emphasizes the importance of digital technology to build a more balanced and sustainable post-COVID-19 economy. We agree that digital provides new avenues for women's economic empowerment, and it can contribute to greater gender equality, fostering a more equal participation in labor markets, financial markets, and entrepreneurship. In fact, entrepreneurship is often the only alternative for labor force participation for women in some emerging markets, particularly rural areas.
However, in many emerging and developing economies, legal and cultural restrictions on female autonomy still prevent women from accessing digital tools. Not to mention, the pandemic has intensified a fundamental weakness of women MSMEs in their digital capabilities.
In order to narrow the digital gender gap, we propose three crucial respects with both top-down and bottom-up strategies to empower women with digital skills in the new normal.
Helping them grasp rising opportunities in social commerce
Working in the digital trade business for decades, I firmly believe the rising opportunities in social commerce open a new window for women globally.
According to Grand View Research, the global social commerce market size is anticipated to reach USD 6.2 trillion by 2030. Social commerce can help women tap into this vast market and overcome many constraints in starting online businesses, including low access to resources, restricted time, and constricted social networks.
By using the tools, women can start businesses anywhere, communicate with customers anytime when they are free from household responsibilities, and eliminate the need for capital to invest in physical stores and products.
For example, MyyShop, a one-stop social commerce SaaS platform, helps content creators and entry level merchants leverage their influence to market the right products more lightly on various social networks.
Ms. Miriam Febechukwu, a Nigerian lady attended the MyyShop training program. It enables her to start the online business in a much lighter way. It helps her open an internet store, build a site with customized pages, select matching products, and order fulfillment in just a few minutes. Unlike traditional e-commerce sites, she can now easily build up the site and quickly close deals by sharing product links with her friends in Africa.
Nurturing women with communities' support
It is vital to build up professional communities for women, which can work as access to various resources, information, and funding. Ms. Megan Bozzuto, President of the International Association of Women attending this workshop, also believes that the resources, tools, connections, and communities can really empower women and give them the things they need to feel confident and excel.
When developing their businesses, women usually face the challenge of lacking resources. A professional community can introduce, develop, and help our sisters implement solutions by all stakeholders and contributors of the group.
More importantly, it enables women to communicate in a safe, judgment-free space where they easily exchange entrepreneurship-relevant knowledge and working experiences with entrepreneurial peers, to empower and inspire each other.
I believe APEC, ABAC, and APEC Women Connect are the sample communities to promote regional economic integration inclusively, as well as the modern, efficient and effective incubators and executors of ideas and solutions.
Strengthening multilateral cooperation to support women
Multilateral cooperation, particularly for developing and underdeveloped countries, is a key to accelerating knowledge sharing and technical support. We must connect the dots across different continents and organizations, coordinate efforts, and maximize resources. More importantly, increase visibility to get our voices for women heard.
In APEC, we can start the cooperation only focusing on two to three pilot programs with only a few participating economies. The most important thing is to start with solving the "real problems", one by one, not only through our beliefs, but through our actions. Only in this way, we can develop and implement practicable solutions.
Also, to keep the multilateral cooperation inclusive and sustainable, it is critical to leverage the local networks to enhance the cooperation impact across different markets. The most important thing is to consolidate more resources and leverage partnerships with international organizations that already have projects related to women empowerment or gender equality, In the past years, we have worked closely with ABAC, B20, and BRICS WBA in this format, bringing women empowerment programs together as much as we can.
Furthermore, the collaboration format can be flexible, whether it's funding, human resources, media resources, or others, as our key is to maximize resources, bring women empowerment programs together as much as possible, and put effort into solving the ‘real issues
For example, with support and endorsement by the leaders of UN, APEC, and G20 economies, the APEC Women Connect program launched in 2016 has empowered women to realize digital entrepreneurship through inspirational sharing, practical learning, effective recognition, and awarding. Over the past six years, the program has successfully trained over 100,000 women MSMEs and cultivated over 1,200 women entrepreneurs.
