Women’s Role in Nonprofit

For many years, the patriarchal model has dominated the organization of our societies in both developed and developing countries. Women’s discrimination problems, which are linked to this model, can thus be found in various parts of the world. Despite the fact that these women’s issues are global in scope, it is clear that their full participation is critical to achieving sustainable development. They play an important role in environmental development and management.

Historicity

Social work has historically been linked to charities. These professions became more professional over the 19th and 20th centuries without losing their fundamentals based on care, listening, help, and advice, which are strong supports for social workers. Women’s commitment to these professions has enabled emancipation, the combination of professional and family life in acceptable conditions for past and current generations. Today, social work is still predominantly women, and some professions are exclusively women.

In Africa

African women are creators and essential actors in all socio-economic sectors. Thus, with their associations, African women, especially Congolese, invest in the peaceful resolution of conflicts from Sun City (in South Africa) during the inter-Congolese dialogue until the 2006 elections. Crucial role in the peace process in countries in conflict or post-conflict, in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Spain or the rise of women in social action

Spanish volunteers are made up equally of men and women, with a slight majority for the former, except the social action sector, where the balance tilts clearly on the side of women. Within this sector, the volunteer profile is a woman (between 57% and 75% depending on the sources), aged 31 to 45, with a secondary education level, involved approximately four hours per week.

The United Kingdom or the force of female commitment

In the United Kingdom, voluntary activity is the most generalized since it concerns more than a third of the population. The voluntary sector is highly structured and intervenes where the State does not, in a context of low public spending on social policy and the privatization of social services. This associative culture is anchored in socialization to volunteering from the school system and is based on a strong complementarity between dynamic volunteering and highly professionalized and qualified employees. Funding is varied, with an essential role for foundations and the State, but tends to evolve towards a more commercial logic.

In the UK, women are more likely to volunteer (64%) than men (54%). In addition, they represent 58% of recent volunteers (5 years of seniority at most) and 54% among long-standing volunteers (6 years and beyond). The profile of the volunteer person is a woman aged 35-44 or 55-64, holding a job. But here again, and for historical reasons perhaps more than in other countries, the sectors and places of female and male engagement are clearly distinguished. Women, excluded from male organizations, have created their own, particularly in the philanthropic and religious sectors and trade unions and politics.

What about Haiti?

In Haiti, women occupy an important place in the country’s economy. Indeed, more than 50% of them carry out an economic activity, mainly in trade, sales, transport, hotels, community services, and agriculture. According to the United Nations, this rate is the highest in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Precarious employment is one of the factors contributing to the feminization of poverty in Haiti, as women earn less than men, work more in the informal sector without the right to social security (55.9 percent), and are underrepresented in formal jobs (30 percent ). It is critical to promote responsibility sharing in the home and family and value unpaid domestic work. But many of them are confined to the informal sector. In particular, these are commonly called “merchants,” selling on the sidewalks and markets food and basic necessities.

The role of women in non-profits?

• They make it possible to participate in the transformation of the social sector.

It is by analyzing the failures of past policies to take into account the needs and interests of women that a body of knowledge has been generated to formulate better practices for the future.

In conclusion, the concept of community participation should not be used as a euphemism to camouflage women’s unpaid or underpaid work in the community because women not only have essential responsibilities in reproductive activities, but they also have a great role in production work but also in innovation. If the problems of inequality, violence, poverty, etc. specific to women have a worldwide scope, the programs and measures to be implemented to eliminate discrimination against women depend on the social, economic, cultural, and environmental characteristics of each society: As soon as countries are at stages of development, they should be able to set their own priorities based on their development policies and resource capacities.