Ways Fair Trade is Empowering Women

Women's empowerment has an important impact on families, communities, and cultures--including economic empowerment. This means allowing women to be treated as equals in their marketplace, and granting them decision-making power.

Although this practice sounds fairly simple, there are cultural barriers. In order to get around the cultural barriers, fair-trade creates opportunities for women and promotes gender equality.

With every fair-trade product sold, the producer can earn an additional amount of money, which goes into a worker controlled community development fund. To promote economic empowerment for women, fair-trade conducts surveys with workers in certified facilities. Creating a work environment where employees feel heard allows other serious issues like sexual harassment to be addressed.