42.8 percent of women in Bangladesh are working women. The percentage is inspiring and upholding, although gender discrimination is persisting as we are an emerging country. Meanwhile, 34.87 percent of girls drop out of secondary school due to child marriage, poverty, and an urge to contribute something to the family. Yet, 42.8% of women work, which is inspiring, we must say. Year by year, the percentage is increasing, although their working conditions are not getting better. But PriyoShop is ensuring a healthy workplace for women so that they feel more at ease at work. Let’s see how we are empowering women one by one.
Decent and Positive Workplace Conditions:
Although women are employed in the informal and formal economy. In most cases, women feel that they are not treated decently or asked unnecessary or provocative questions, which often breaks their confidence to work smoothly. This lack of women-friendly work environments creates a significant barrier in their career path. And they often feel not interested in hands on training and field work. So, driven women just do their job as a survival job rather than being more ambitious. They feel that all the hierarchical positions are allocated for the men, and they are not deserving.
PriyoShop selects the most deserving and demanding women for the workplace, train them under efficient trainers so that they can adjust the learning period.
Unsurprisingly, this has proven to have strong retention rates in PriyoShop. Most females continued working in their designated positions and giving support through thick and thin of PriyoShop.
Adjusting the Cost of Attendance
Women who are working both at the office and at home are often living under extreme pressure that makes them unaware of whether they are getting decent pay and unnecessary deductions are not happening in their salary. To ensure that their payments are fair and that the cost of attendance is not happening, we introduce them to our updated HR policies.
Many female employees live in vulnerable conditions, we ensure their amount is fair and enough so that their living costs are met up nicely. Moreover, we are planning to add transportation facilities and other international benefits for them.
Enhance Interpersonal Skills
Many women have access to updated information and livelihood, but they have few social interactions due to family and religious obligations, forcing them to lag behind men in the job market.
We address these barriers and try to introduce them to soft skills training. This can be a paid course and on-the-job training, covering employability, communication, digital literacy, financial literacy, and social and environmental awareness. These trainings boost the learners’ self-esteem and confidence, both professionally and personally, and provide them with a theoretical understanding of the market.
Empowering Women Retailers with Embedded Finance and Smooth Supply Chain
Women retailers face various social and familial challenges simply because they are women. Root-level business is not easy for them. Women retailers often face social backlash because they dared to build their families with the money from their small shops. These issues cannot be resolved overnight. However, creating opportunities for women and fostering a business-friendly environment will motivate many women to venture into retail business. This is why PriyoShop is extending its aid towards the undeserving women retailers as well. By reaching supplies to the shops and providing them with fintech solutions, we are trying to build a safe eco-system for them.
It is undeniable that women face significantly more barriers compared to men. Their opportunity in accessing and completing skills training programmes is very squeezed than men. This is negatively impacting women’s participation in the larger labour market. We are scaling up and making an effective workplace-inclusive business system so that they can be recognized globally, contribute more to economic development, and strengthen their financial capacities.
Ref:
1. https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/trade/bd-womens-participation-in-workforce-increasing-in-post-covid-period-ilo
2. https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/education/news/secondary-schools-number-students-drops-third-year-row-3577171