Empower Women Advocacy Tool

Bioazul attended the #WeEmpower event: “Strengthening Support for Women Entrepreneurs during COVID-19″, where our CEO Antonia Lorenzo participated as an example of an entrepreneurial woman.

This online event was organized Empower Women, a global movement with more than half a million viewers and over 18,500 passionate and ambitious women and men from the private sector, civil society, academia, governments and international organizations more than 198 countries. It also had the support of other institutions as UN Women, International Labour Organization and the European Union.

This movement looks for promote the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), which are a set of Principles offering guidance to business on how to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community. Established by UN Global Compact and UN Women, the WEPs are informed by international labour and human rights standards and grounded in the recognition that businesses have a stake in, and a responsibility for, gender equality and women’s empowerment. Bioazul sings the WEPs on April 2020 (here you can check our profile).

This time, the aim of the virtual meeting was to present the Advocacy Tool “Strengthening Support for Women Entrepreneurs in COVID-19 Response and Recovery” to drive support from stakeholders within the women’s entrepreneurship ecosystem amid COVID-19. It features key recommendations for the public sector, private sector, and civil society in supporting women entrepreneurs along five key themes: creating an enabling environment, access to information, skills and knowledge, access to markets, access to networks, and access to knowledge.

The COVID-19 has exacerbated inequalities and posed a serious threat to the fragile gains made for women’s economic empowerment. Now we have an opportunity to build back better with a globally coordinated multi-stakeholder approach to strengthen a women’s economic empowerment ecosystem that fosters growth, sustainability, and resilience for women entrepreneurs.

As an example of how implement the gender equality in the private sector, Antonia Lorenzo was invited to talk about her professional trajectory, the challenges she has faced as a woman and how she has worked to guarantee gender equality in Bioazul.

In general, it was an event with great acceptance where it highlighted the important role that we all play in advocating for gender equality and the unique impact our efforts have on strengthening women’s entrepreneurship.

And the most important, we want to join the Women Empowerment Principles (WEPs) to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community!