Women's economic empowerment project ends first year in Rio de Janeiro

On December 14th, the first phase of the project for the economic empowerment of women beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família program, which took place in Morro dos Prazeres since October 2013, ended. The event featured the final of the men's futsal championship and Bingo. Uniting Prazeres, which involved men, women and their families on the topic of women's economic empowerment in the community.

The project, in addition to encouraging the economic empowerment of women beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program, sought to raise awareness among men and partners to engage in gender equality. For three months, around 20 women participated in gender and income generation workshops and 80 men participated in workshops to deconstruct rigid masculinity standards. A futsal championship was used as a tool to mobilize and sensitize men in the discussion.

With the aim of expanding the theme in the community, the project promoted the holding of three editions of Bingo Unindo Prazeres, which dealt with issues of gender and female empowerment in a playful way.

To plan the intervention, researchers carried out focus groups with female Bolsa Família beneficiaries (3 groups with 20 women each) and also in-depth interviews with beneficiary couples in order to understand the impact of the program on their lives. To measure the impacts of the project on the attitudes and perceptions of the men and women involved, a quantitative and qualitative survey was carried out at the end of the intervention. A focus group was held with the participating women (20 in total) and 30 men responded to a questionnaire, which included the GEM scale (a scale that measures the level of gender equality in men and women).

In addition to Rio de Janeiro, the same project will take place in a community in Recife in 2014, under the coordination of Instituto Papai, and in a rural community in the state of Rio de Janeiro. With this, it will be possible to compare the results and impacts of actions in different contexts, to understand the impact of the Bolsa Família Program on women's empowerment and generating recommendations for complementary activities to the government program.