Access to Employment for Women (Bolivia)

Bolivia is considered one of the poorest countries in South America. Bolivian women are marginalised from access to employment opportunities. To build equity by facilitating education, training and access to employment, Reledev Australia Limited with the collaboration of AusAID and Asociación para la Promoción Cultural y Social (APROCS) implemented an education and training program in La Paz, Bolivia.

The project provided adult women who had only 6 years schooling with an accelerated program to complete their secondary education. To sustain this effort, educational assessors redesigned and refined the curriculum following a 2-year review process and the appropriate teacher and student resources were produced. In the final year of the project, skills-training was integrated in the accelerated education program to further enhance the program, motivate more women to complete their education and increase their employment potential.

The project also offered women training courses in trade skills (aged care, child-care, cookery and hospitality services) that have employment prospects in La Paz. Aged care and child-care were especially attractive for women and provided immediate employment opportunities. Tourism and hospitality services are a growing priority in Bolivia, however, career pathways in these services are still not established in the country. Reledev believes that tourism will be a growth area and that it will provide women with employment as the industry is developed across Bolivia.

Work experience was coordinated for those women doing aged care, child-care or hospitality training. This activity aimed to link the trained women directly into a job placement available in the market. A total of 52 organisations participated in the project (hospitals, nursing homes, nurseries, hotels, etc). 130 women completed work experience and received technical support. About 98% of the women who completed work experience achieved employment. Only 3 women are not employed due to personal or family reasons. This is an excellent outcome considering the economic turmoil that Bolivia went through during the course of the project’s lifetime. Overall, this demonstrates the effectiveness of work experience in creating linkages to employment. Furthermore, women gained confidence, achieved prestige at their places of work and promoted the training courses themselves. It was observed that the women increased in self-esteem and in the awareness of their self-worth.

It was noted that women applied what they learned in their own homes (improved hygiene and health care), assumed their obligations more readily, learned to demand their rights (such as a just wage) and, if needed, had recourse to publicly available legal counsel. They now have a broader outlook on their potential and have acquired a desire for further development.

About 181 women in the Training Program were in poverty before training, that is, they were earning less than $2 per day. Of these women about 133 were in extreme poverty, earning less than $1 per day. Some 55 other women earned between $2-4 per day. Only 21 women had incomes safely above this rate. After training, the number of women in poverty and extreme poverty was reduced to 72. Some women achieved earnings as high as $11 per day.

Activities	3 Year Goals	3 Year Results
Accelerated Education Program	122	127
Training Program	243	257
Work Experience	135	130
Women in Jobs	243	236