Empower Women and Children Fund

Arab American women and children face serious challenges that prevent them from fully participating in American life. Roughly 80% of the Arab American-serving organizations surveyed in a recent Center for Arab American Philanthropy (CAAP) study reported women felt isolated from the economy because of language and educational barriers.

Many women and children are especially vulnerable as recent immigrants and refugees, facing trauma and health issues, and limited opportunities for employment. There is an urgent need to support initiatives for Arab American women’s economic empowerment.

On the macro level, research points to the need to foster women’s economic empowerment. A USAID report recommends that globally, equal access to critical markets should be fostered for women as workers and entrepreneurs. Additionally, half of UN Women’s 10 Priorities for Public Action in 2015-2016 contained economic repercussions. The top priority was to create more and better jobs for women, which includes investing in gender-responsive public services to create decent jobs in health, education, child and elderly care, public administration and agriculture:

Women’s access to decent employment is not only likely to improve their agency and the distributional dynamics within the household but can also lift whole households out of poverty. In the long term, societies and economies can only thrive if they make full use of women’s skills and capacities.

Studies show that women tend to invest a higher amount of their earnings in their families and communities when compared with men. This naturally has a ripple effect on children, which creates a stronger support system during the most critical years of development.

CAAP’s Empower Women and Children Fund is working to address these unmet needs by partnering with organizations across the country to enhance opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship.

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