One of the flags that Marta Lucía Ramírez has led from her role as vice president of Colombia is the empowerment of women. She has done so through policies, programs and resources focused especially on women’s entrepreneurship, topics on which she spoke with Portafolio.
What achievements has Colombia had with the equality policy for women?
From the Vice Presidency we have worked with the Ministry for Women’s Equity to position them in three areas: economic empowerment, social leadership and political empowerment and violence prevention. We promoted the issue by including a chapter on gender equality in the Development Plan and, for the first time, all the governors introduced a similar one in their development plans. Economically empowering women is a priority for true equity!
In addition, I proposed creating an Empowered Women’s House for access to institutional offerings, where legal advice, technology training, business and entrepreneurial development support, and sociological support are offered to those who have suffered violence. We have already installed 26 houses in different departments. I hope to create at least one in each region.
In addition, during confinement we created a trust to support women’s entrepreneurship and in the Entrepreneurship Law we transformed it into the Women Emprende Fund. To date we have impacted 1,904,354 Colombians. A financially autonomous woman can not only materialize her projects, but also escape the violence imposed by couples who use her economic capacity as blackmail to keep her by her side, under the yoke of abuse.
What support has the Government promoted to encourage female labor inclusion?
Women were one of the populations most affected by the pandemic, so we took on the task of promoting the generation of employment for them and, little by little, we have managed to reverse the figures: in January 2022 -according to DANE- 1.5 million jobs lost in the midst of the crisis were recovered, 57.6% of which correspond to women.
In addition, thanks to the inclusion of a gender approach in the network of public employment service providers, we managed to generate 983,688 jobs for them. We have also undertaken actions with the private sector, such as our ‘We build at par’ program, hand in hand with Camacol, with which we have reached 19 departments to link more women to the construction sector.
What is missing to close gender gaps?
The first thing is that each and every one of the social actors take steps of good will to make the discourse of gender equity a reality. There is an important seed that is germinating, a legacy that we are going to leave as a State policy that we hope will be paid by our successors.
Specifically, we will prepare our Sovereign Gender Bond, with which we are pioneers in the region. And something that fills me with hope: we have impacted more than 800,000 women, including young people and girls, through STEM + ICT programs. It is a scaffolding that we have strengthened and whose fruits we hope will multiply in the coming years.
According to Ramírez, “we have impacted more than 800,000 women, including young people and girls, through STEM + ICT programs.”
The Government launched a presidential directive with a gender approach for economic reactivation. What results does this approach leave?
Since the pandemic began, we have implemented Presidential Directive # 11, which orders the ministerial portfolios, within the framework of the ‘Commitment for Colombia’ reactivation plan, to undertake actions that stimulate the generation of employment and entrepreneurship of women. Thanks to this, 399,091 job opportunities have been created for them.
Something very important, which complements this scaffolding, is the Women Emprende Fund, aligned with the Entrepreneurship Law, and which draws on resources from the private sector and international cooperation to finance women’s businesses in the countryside and in the city and help them to consolidate your business ideas. This Fund has a capital of $56,000 million and, as of January 28, 2022, $16,000 million were committed. We hope that, in the medium term, Colombia will become a nation of women entrepreneurs.
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