Empowerment will help address issues, Solomon says

 THE empowerment of women in economics will ensure other issues affecting women in development of PNG will be addressed, Community Development Secretary Anna Solomon says.

Her comments followed the launching of applications for nominees last Friday to identify an iconic business woman to represent the country in 2015 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Women in Economics Forum to be held in Philippines in two months’ time.

“The country has a policy on national women agenda equality and we focus on three different areas, women in leadership, gender based equality, but we are moving a lot stronger towards women economic empower because that will address many of the other issues to do with women,” Solomon said.

“And we would have seen that women have shown a lot of things in terms of business.

“In our country we have women that have entered all sorts of areas in business from professional to SMEs (small to medium enterprises).

“For us to go to the meeting in Manilla we must have a women’s icon for PNG.

“With the 21 APEC countries, we will have to select an icon for each of our countries and PNG will have to do that.

“The main objective is to give recognition to women icons from micro business to SMEs of APEC member economies to share their stories and best endeavours. “

Solomon said applications for nominations were now open and could be picked up from Office of Community Development.

She said one of the criteria was that the person to be nominated should have had an impact on the community through her business.