Delivering The Global Goals 2019

Women’s ability to earn money is not only a fundamental economic right but is also critical to improving their and their family’s wellbeing. Through our programme, women gain knowledge in small business management and in a vocational skill (e.g. tailoring) that can help them earn a living.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. We specifically target the most marginalised women for our programme. We can see from this data that almost all of the women who entered our programme in 2019 were living in poverty, and therefore even a small increase of 50% is encouraging, especially in this fragile context they are living in.

*$1.90 a day is the international extreme poverty line set by the World Bank

For the women we serve, our programme is the first time they are in control of an amount of their own money (through earnings or stipend). Our programme supports women to learn good savings habits and mechanisms for saving in order for women to move away from hand-to-mouth financial management. 

This is especially important in Afghanistan where the majority of women are charged with household financial management (for example, buying food for their family) and are learning how to save even on an incredibly low income.

Food security is a key indicator of wellbeing and decreasing poverty. Food security is not just about having access to enough food but also nutritious food. Nutrition is a key part of our training, supporting women and their family’s health and wellbeing. 

Upon graduating from our year-long programme, 97% of women reported having sufficient food in the house in the last four weeks, compared to 100% at enrolment. During this period, there were some natural disasters such as heavy snow fall which led to food insecurity. However, while the quantities of food may decrease slightly on graduation, graduates in Afghanistan have told us that they learnt a lot about nutrition from the programme, with reports of changes to household cooking and eating habits.

51% of women on our programme in Afghanistan reported sometimes or frequently practising family planning at graduation compared to 43% at enrolment.

In conservative communities where we work women are denied influence over decision-making including over their own bodies. Women practising family planning is a key indicator of women having more awareness and influence over their own bodies.

Many of the women who enrol on our programme have never completed primary school due to discrimination in their communities that undervalues girls. The increases in access to education is a positive sign of change that will impact across generations.

Women graduates of our programme in Afghanistan reported that 43% of girls were in school compared to 39% at enrolment.

Women gaining confidence is central to their empowerment, believing in themselves and their abilities to participate, succeed, engage and create change for themselves, their facilities and communities. It is also a positive sign of recovery from trauma and isolation. Using a set of questions commonly used in women’s empowerment research studies, we present self-efficacy as a score on a scale of 0-1, where 1 indicates the highest possible level of self-efficacy.

The perceived self-efficacy of the women on our programme in Afghanistan has increased on graduation, from 0.44 on average to 0.57 on a scale of 0-1.

In the conservative communities where we work, women are denied influence over decision-making – including over their own bodies. Our data highlights an important shift in women’s voices being heard in decision-making which should also lead to positive changes in wellbeing.

Overall, in Afghanistan, we are seeing about 50% of women reporting involvement across several household decisions. For this specific indicator, we have found that women do not necessarily appreciate the relevance at baseline. By endline, having been through training, women realise that this is applicable which changes the denominator and explains the decrease here.

Women face multiple barriers to accessing employment. For example, in Afghanistan, attitudes in communities favour men working with women expected to stay at home to cook, clean and look after the children. Yet women’s employment is critical to their economic opportunities.

On graduation of our programme, 11% of women reported employment across all occupation levels compared to 8% at enrolment.

Conflict and poverty increase women’s vulnerability to all forms of violence, with violence acting as both a consequence and driver of discrimination with women surviving violence being more vulnerable to further abuse.

8% of graduates of our programme in Afghanistan reported publicly speaking out against abuse of women compared to 3% at enrolment.

Women’s engagement with groups in their community demonstrates women’s increasing participation. Informal networks are key for providing social and economic
support as well as group decision-making skills through elections of committees to manage the group.

The percentage of women who discussed issues with other women in her community increased by 75%, from 8% at enrolment with 14% at graduation.