About Crawn Trust
The Community Advocacy and Awareness (CRAWN) Trust is a change catalyst providing African women and girls with the tools, voice and platforms through which they can effect change at individual, family, community, regional, national and continental levels in economic, social and political spheres. CRAWN Trust is the host organization and permanent secretariat for the National Women’s Steering CommitteeNWSC, a coalition platform that brings together individuals and organizations working for women’s political and economic emancipation.
On the political front, the CRAWN Trust and the NWSC have been effective in contributing to raising awareness on women constitutionally guaranteed political rights and enabling women claim those rights as well as supporting women actively hold the line while participating in leadership and decision-making spaces from the local to the national levels. Through our network we have initiated several activities to ensure that women’s voices and perspectives are on the leadership and decision-making tables by linking women to duty bearers at both the county and the national levels as well as build networks of sisterhood and solidarity that can support the emergence of women leaders. On the economic front, women continue to be seriously underrepresented in the business sphere and remain largely economically excluded. To address this, CRAWN Trust is investing in research to drive advocacy for women’s economic emancipation so as to close the economic gender gap.
CRAWN Trust is a principal partner in the Women’s Voice and Leadership-WVL Program which aims to contribute to gender equality and the increased enjoyment of human rights by women and girls in Kenya. The project is funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) is being delivered in Kenya by CARE Canada, CARE Kenya, CRAWN Trust, Uraia Trust, The Centre for Rights Education (CREAW) and the Urgent
Action Fund (UAF- Africa). CRAWN Trust is leading in the networking and alliance building pillar.
The goal of the program is to support the capacity and activities of local and national women’s organizations and movements seeking to empower women and girls, advance the protection of women’s and girls’ rights,and achieve gender equality with the ultimate outcome being the “increased enjoyment of human rights by women and girls and the enjoyment of gender equality in Kenya”. Under the WVL networking and alliance pillar, CRAWN Trust will be initiating a series on women and the economy to address women continued economic exclusion. Towards this end, CRAWN Trust commissioned a research on women and the economy in recognition of the fact that women comprise over half of the population and represent a largely untapped pool of economic potential. Gender inequality remains a serious economic issue because the barriers that continue to hold back women’s economic potential are yet to be fully addressed. Although Kenyan women are making economic contributions, a big part of it is “invisible” and poorly remunerated if all. Women contribute significantly in agriculture and the informal business sector, but suffer the disadvantage or challenge of time and are considered “time-poor” as a result of their dual roles in the household economy and the labor market. As a result, you will find that women work longer hours compared to men and earn less because more of these hours are spent in “unpaid care work”. The purpose
therefore of the research on women and the economy, was aimed at highlighting the contribution of women to the economy and development in general.
