Empowering women or women empowerment is a continuous and uphill climb for women from all walks of life. It is a powerful concept that bespeaks women’s awareness on matters that fundamentally affect them as they interact with their family, community and government. It entails developing an understanding of the external environment and building their capacity to intervene in these external processes and make informed decisions. Empowering women takes many forms; the most common and immediately visible is economic empowerment.

As women’s participation in the labor force steadily increases, women’s place in the business world also expands slowly but surely. A case worth mentioning is the marked improvement in the regional economy of Asia and the Pacific attributed to enterprising women who opt to expand their initiatives and to take a more active role in the productive sphere. These women did not necessarily infuse additional funds to energize their businesses but instead maximized resources available in the community to meet the needs of customers while ensuring a reasonable profit for business sustainability while putting food on the table of the business undertakers. With the mushrooming of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) run and/or managed by women, women are assured of employment and entrepreneurship thus enhancing their employability. 

With the advent of globalization characterized by the entry of foreign products into the domestic market, new technologies have evolved paving the way for people, information and products to be accessible at lesser time and lower cost than they previously did. As these new technologies provide new knowledge and information, innovations and growth will not be far behind for everyone. Thus enterprising women and men are provided new tools to further boost their businesses, enhance their skills and improve the situation of their families and society as well. It is time for men and women to open up to the digital economy and the use of information and communication technologies in their daily lives. Thus the AWCF (Asian Women in Co-operative Development Forum), in tandem with InWEnt gGmbh, Germany (Capacity Building International, Germany), is offering the it@coops project2 to the world, particularly to co-ops in Southeast Asia.