The following guest post by Ellen Dorsch, Founder of Creative Women, is part of Disruptive Women’s “The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World” series.

Building on her commitment to women’s well being, her love of travel, her desire to experience the challenges of the private sector, and her love of hand-made products, Ellen Dorsch decided to leave the non-profit sector and start Creative Women. Today, Creative Women imports elegant hand-woven products from women-owned businesses in Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Swaziland, and Mali. Each product Creative Women sells, allows the company’s colleagues to hire more workers and to pay them decent wages and benefits helping them, and their families, to live a healthier lifestyle, and to receive health care when needed.

When I left my consulting business about seven years ago, friends and colleagues asked me if I thought I would miss working in Public Health. I had been working, for over 30 years, in Vermont (my home), nationally, and in East Africa, Central American, and Russia … in program development, evaluation, and administration. I had decided that I no longer enjoyed writing grants or looking for new contracts, and I very much wanted to experience working in the private sector.

I left and started Creative Women, an importer of elegant textiles from Ethiopia and a business with a social mission … to create jobs. I soon realized that I didn’t leave public health, but rather was impacting on women’s lives from another perspective. I saw that with some independent money, women would have more options about their lives, including (hopefully) the ability to leave a relationship where they or their children are not safe.

After 7 years working with women-owned businesses in Ethiopia, Swaziland, Afghanistan, and now Mali, I’ve expanded my definition of Public Health and believe that employment is as necessary for good health as vaccines and clean water. Initially, I argued that financial independence, or at least some earning power, meant a woman could say no to an abusive partner, or could pay school fees for her daughter(s). This became more real to me as I heard stories from some of the sewers and cleaners who worked at Menby’s Design, the first business I worked with in Ethiopia. A woman whose husband beat her up because she objected to him having a “second wife” was able to take her children and leave her unsafe home. And because she had some income, she could return to her parent’s home and not be a financial burden to them. This income meant the difference between safety and abuse to her and her children.

I also saw that a business owner, who pays her employees fairly, gives workers benefits, recognizes the demands on working women, and creates a safe working environment is a vitally important public health intervention. The owner of Coral Stephens, in Swaziland, provides transportation and time off, so that employees can get free and anonymous HIV testing. By doing this, in a country with one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world, she allows her employees to get testing, counseling, and treatment without her partner and/or family knowing her status.

At Azana, a small weaving studio in Afghanistan, employees are encouraged to join a free, in house, literacy class at the of their work day. Not usually seen as a health intervention, being able to read, among other things, increases a woman’s ability to find work and to provide clothing, health care, good food, and school fees for her kids.

Working with other women allows women to form the equivalent of support groups, where they a share information about their bodies, bringing up their kids, and their rights. In some of the workshops that I work with, this dynamic serves a similar purpose as parenting groups, health ed programs, and informal referral groups that are often offered at clinics in the US.

Finally, employment, and the resulting information, money, and support, can greatly impact a woman’s self-esteem. At Sabahar, in Ethiopia, one of the finishers, a young woman who had very bad teeth, and rarely smiled because of this, saved some of her small salary and eventually was able to buy false teeth. I have a wonderful photo of her, smiling and talking with a group of her peers. I wonder how much these new teeth, and her new sense of self, affect her ability to move ahead at work, bring up her children, and create a better life for those around her.

Related posts:

1. Solutions to Poor Health in Developing Countries
2. Public Health Thank You Day
3. Written Public Testimony to House Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation: Championing a More Active Role for NIST in the Life Sciences
4. March Man-of-the Month: Dr. Ted Eytan Interviews Holly Potter, Kaiser Permanente’s VP for Public Relations, on the Use of Social Media in Health Care
5. Why VirtuArte?

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 11:54 am and is filed under Global Health, Women's Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.