Issues in the flower sector
Women make up the majority of the workforce in Kenya’s floriculture sector. While lots of progress has been made in recent years to improve women’s rights in the sector, women workers are still facing a wide range of challenges that impede their economic empowerment and resilience.
Women’s rights organisations have long been advocating for improvements in the sector but largely by working against companies. Flower companies in turn have become weary of working with women’s rights organisations. These relationships need to be bettered to benefit all parties involved.
Invest in authentic,
trust-based and mutually benefitting partnerships.
Through our Building Bridges for Women’s Economic Empowerment programme, we aim to bring the two stakeholders together to build positive, collaborative partnerships to design win-win solutions that benefit both women workers as well as business.
We used our Drawing the Line methodology to hear directly from women flower farm workers on what their key priorities for change are. With these results flower companies and women’s rights organisations entered Collaborate for Impact initiatives to implement projects addressing the women workers’ priorities.
Examples of initiatives include:
- Creating workers rights resources that account for women’s low levels of literacy
- Designing and implementing menstrual health management policies
- Organising leadership training for women in different levels of the company
See our Gender Lens Tools page for more information
