Pardee School Partners with State Department on Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience
On September 20, 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience, a public-private partnership between the United States State Department and Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies that aims to promote the economic rights and well-being of Afghan women.
Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in the Summer of 2021, they have rolled back two decades of progress denying women’s movement, preventing girls from attending secondary schools, prohibiting women in the workplace, and more. The announced initiative will address these setbacks, “help improve access to education and training, expand job opportunity, [and] support women entrepreneurs in Afghanistan as well as in other countries,” according to Secretary Blinken.
Rachel Brulé, Assistant Professor of Global Development Policy at the Pardee School, is the primary architect of this project. In a memo to BU leadership, she wrote, “promoting women’s economic agency is not only a prerequisite for their basic welfare but can also empower women to make investments in the collective well-being of communities across Afghanistan and globally…BU’s Pardee School, its faculty, and its students will have the unique opportunity of playing a leading role in a high-visibility public-private partnership to advance economic gender equality in one of the world’s most challenging countries for women: Afghanistan.”
In commenting on the partnership, Dean Scott Taylor noted that “even those who were fortunate enough to escape Taliban rule, especially women and girls, face tremendous hardship and vulnerabilities. The Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience attempts to bring together a host of public and private stakeholders to illuminate pathways for human development.”
Secretary Blinken’s announcement of the alliance can be viewed below. For more, read BU Today‘s article on the initiative.