For the majority of women ...continuing obstacles have hindered their ability to achieve economic autonomy and to ensure sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their dependants. Women are active in a variety of economic areas, which they often combine, ranging from wage labour and subsistence farming and fishing, to the informal sector. However, legal and customary barriers to ownership of or means of access to land, natural resources, capital, credit, technology and other means of production, as well as wage differentials, contribute to impeding the economic progress of women.

Women's economic dependence and, often, lack of rights to property or access to finance have long crippled their ability to take care of themselves and their families. The Beijing Platform therefore recommends that steps be taken to:

• Promote women's economic rights and independence, including access to employment, appropriate working conditions and control over economic resources;
• Facilitate women's equal access to resources, employment, markets and trade;
• Provide business services, training and access to markets, information and technology, particularly to low-income women;
• Strengthen women's economic capacity and commercial networks;
• Eliminate occupational segregation and all forms of employment discrimination.

Although women have made substantial progress in closing the gender gap in managerial and professional jobs, unemployment rates are still higher for women than they are for men. Moreover, women worldwide still earn less than men do, with a gross domestic product per capita of $4,523 for women, almost half that for men: $8,103 (UNDP: Human Development Report 1999). Recent economic and political developments, such as globalization of the economy and economic crises in South-east Asia, have seriously affected women and girls in many countries. Lower investments in social sectors have disproportionately affected women, and have led to an increase in trafficking and prostitution, with obvious hazards for women's health.

Increasing Women's Economic Autonomy

One of the most successful types of programme supported in recent years is the small-loans-for-women model, usually coupled with literacy and business training. In countries as disparate as India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Viet Nam and Yemen, women have founded successful small businesses or supplemented their incomes, in the process repaying their loans and thus financing the next group of women.

UNFPA assists projects that enable women, especially the very poor and the non-literate, to develop secure incomes. It supports advocacy aimed at providing access to credit and capital for "micro-enterprises" that teach women to manage productive activities. By reducing economic dependency, these efforts bolster women's self-esteem and empower them to participate more effectively in sexual and reproductive health decisions that affect their own health and lives. Many have found a voice in their communities for the first time as a result.

In Viet Nam, for instance, UNFPA has helped train rural women to set up savings groups eligible for bank credit for agricultural production. In Yeme n , the Fund helped provide business training in collaboration with local government, NGOs and the private sector.

Mitigating the Effects of Globalization

To mitigate the effects of economic crises, UNFPA supports the economic, political and physical empowerment of women, with special emphasis on poor women, indigenous women and girls.

UNFPA is also supporting initiatives that address trafficking in women and girls. In a programme in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, comprising Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Viet Nam and the Yunnan Province of China, governmental and non-governmental organizations collaborate with UN agencies on research that establishes a database on trafficking. Activities also include prevention and education, rescue and resettlement and law enforcement.