In New York today, GCAP members are focusing on the theme of this year’s CSW, “Financing for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment,” calling for increased financing for gender equality and women’s empowerment as well as support for an improved gender equality architecture of the UN.

GCAP’s Feminist Task Force (FTF), which was founded three years ago at these same meetings of the CSW, will present the progress made alongside the findings of International Women’s Tribunals on Poverty, which were held in India and Peru in 2007.

Ana Agostino, GCAP Co-Chair and spokesperson for the Feminist Task Force said: “Poverty cannot be eradicated without equality and justice for women. Current international policies rob women of livelihoods, healthcare and other economic rights, while feeding fundamentalist backlash and militarism that deprive women of personal autonomy and choices. Our demands are fundamental to breaking through this paradigm, they are not cosmetic, they need dedicated funding and integration into all existing policy decisions.”

Women’s empowerment has been getting a boost in a small village in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. The village of Awra Amba (”Top of the Hill”) was founded by 20 Muslim and Christian peasants in the 1980s and now has 400 residents and a growing fan club.

According to a piece in the Christian Science Monitor, the village is an experiment in egalitarianism in an otherwise traditional society, a community where education is emphasized, women are given three months maternity leave from work responsibilities, and men join the women in cooking and weaving, traditionally female activities. Awra Amba’s vision of women’s empowerment, the third UN Millennium Development Goal, has attracted increasing attention internationally:

No matter where you come from, grandma cooks best, cares best, and above all, knows best. Why shouldn’t her wisdom be put to use in maternal and child nutrition, health and development projects?

While many of these projects focus on younger groups, The Grandmother Project empowers grandmothers, increasing the success of maternal and child health projects in Senegal, Mali and Laos. Now the FAO also acknowledged the power of grannies.