Rags2Riches is helping Filipino women take back control of their livelihoods. Photo:fveronesi1 (flickr)

High-fashion designs are turning impoverished Filipino mothers into living-wage artisans.

The average daily wage for a nurse working in the Philippines is $7, but for women in Reese Fernandez-Ruiz’s Rags2Riches program, formerly impoverished mothers can make up to $12 a day, according to Fast Company. Rags2Riches solicits well-known Philippine designers and pairs them with local craftswomen. Working with the designers, the women produce their products with recycled materials in exchange for a premium wage. Fernandez-Ruiz, president and founding partner of Rags2Riches, was herself a poor working mother in one of the Philippines' worst dump sites (home to over 12,000 families) when she created the organization.

Aware that many women were selling foot rugs made from recycled fabric scraps (sourced from the local dump), and were often the victims of shady middlemen who provided and controlled the materials, Fernandez-Ruiz saw the opportunity for the women to take control. In an effort to gain momentum, she asked prominent Filipino designer Rajo Laurel to participate — to her surprise, he agreed. With such a prominent name attached to the project, more designers soon signed on.

Working with some of the Philippines' top designers has helped women boost their daily earnings from 20 cents to $12, said Fast Company. In addition, many are able to work from home, letting them care for their children while continuing to earn money. The organization also incorporates a "quality of life program," in which a portion of each worker's income is deposited into a bank account for future savings.

In its fourth year of operation, Rags2Riches has helped improve the lives and working conditions of over 450 women. It has improved the environmental conditions in the community with it's up-cycle, eco-ethical business model and has provided an invaluable opportunity to hundreds of women and their families.

To hear more about this inspiring business model, check out the video below:

According to Riane Eisler, the work of raising childern is devalued the world over. Photo: Mishimoto (flickr)

Unlearn economics. Forget GDPs and growth rates. Ignore financial institutions (and their crises). Rethink well-being and worth. What do you care about? What in your life holds the greatest value?

This is a good starting place for a conversation with Riane Eisler, author of the highly successful book "The Real Wealth of Nations," amongst others. She believes it is time for a practical critique of modern economics.

Eisler’s work in the fields of economics, women’s studies and social science has attracted a lot of attention. Some list her work beside great thinkers like Smith, Marx and Hegel. The book "Great Peacemakers" named her one of 20 subjects along with Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Theresa. This recognition is largely a result of her work on developing the ideas of a system of "caring economics." We caught up with Eisler this week to discuss just what a caring economy would look like and how it might change the way the world works.

Global Envision: What's wrong with modern economics?

Economics is the study of value, and for decades it has been assumed that value is measured mostly by money. If I value organic vegetables, I will be willing to spend more money for them. It should follow that if the government values organic vegetables, it would support the farmers that grow them. Economists devise ways to assess these values and attach number and formulas to quantify them: net worth, salary, gross domestic product. Flip to any news channel or radio station and you will hear endless debate about these figures as they rise and fall.

Eisler ignores this chatter.

“We have been stuck on a conservation that does not get to the core of the challenges we face,” she says. If economics is to be a measure of what we value and care about, why has it ignored raising infants, supporting families and nursing the elderly or infirmed? The constructs of caring extends beyond human relations and applies to the natural environment. But under both capitalism and communism, land is seen only as a source of profit. “An old stand of trees is only given value when it is chopped down," Eisler says. "And yet we need them standing to breathe.”

Economic measures have become divorced from the real values they were originally intended to quantify, Eisler argues. For her, this is no coincidence. "Economic systems don’t evolve in a vacuum," she says. "They are cultural constructs.” According to Eisler, the current system evolved in an environment where nature was exploited and so-called "women’s work" was devalued. Consider this: a women who stays at home and cooks, cleans, gardens, feeds, washes, and rears her three children for 16 hours a day contributes absolutely nothing to the GDP, a measure of a country's standard of living. Instead, the GDP values only income. This includes the cleanup of environmental disasters, the sale of cancer causing cigarettes, war operations and weapon manufacture.

GE: If GDP is a bad measure of value, what statistics should replace it?

Eisler was ready for this question. In a recent report commissioned by Center for Partnership Studies, Eisler helped to synthesize 14 categories with 79 indicators that more accurately measure well-being, including human rights ratings, the number of premature deaths from pollution, and access to health care, as well as more traditional measures of joblessness rates and average annual earnings.

Eisler also hinted that measuring mechanisms should be secondary to the values behind them.

GE: In past economic transformations, the people with the least have been first to lose their livelihoods.

Eisler assured me this would not be the case. “After all, the majority of poor are women and children and a major reason for this is that care-giving is given no value,” she said. To prove her point, she pointed to societies who have already taken steps to place a greater value on caring. Many Nordic countries, who always seem to score high on human development indices, provide extended paternity leave for both parents, offer universal health care, and support government-funded child support. But can low income countries afford such programs? Eisler acknowledged the challenges they would face but also reminded me of CCTs in Latin America, a government program that financially rewards mothers for taking their children to health checkups and primary school.

GE: With this week's massive spending cuts by an austere U.S. Congress, could the transition to "caring economics" happen here?

Eisler agrees the signs don’t look good but still remains hopeful. The way she sees it, creating an economic system that values the unpaid work of caring is an investment, not just an expenditure. In other words, the money spent now will be returned in future savings and revenues. And she has the scientific research to back her up. In her book, "The Real Wealth of Nations," she cites substantial evidence that private corporations have been able to realize savings and increase profits by taking care of their workers.

GE: It sounds like there's a lot of work to be done. What's the role for those of us without advanced degrees in economic theory?

Eisler's answer was surprising: Everything. She believes that interdisciplinary support outside the field of economics must begin valuing the work of caring. Gender equality, civil rights, environmental responsibility, access to quality education, the right to health care, and supporting families are all areas that work towards the goal of overriding the top-down, masculine-valued economic system currently in place.

“Change doesn’t happen quickly,” Eisler reminded me. “It can, but there are many steps that need to be taken.” Eisler is hoping to create a ground swelling grassroots movement that can champion such a transformation. Her foundation, the Center for Partnership Studies is making progress and inviting others to do the same. For example, the foundation offers an online training program where people from all over the world are able take leadership roles in the economic transformation. The next session begins this fall.

“The response to the online program has been wonderful,” Eisler said. But she also mentioned that with the size of this paradigm shift, “We will need more people.”

Eisler will speak on "The Power of Partnership: Towards a Caring Economics and Society" at 2 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 5, at Marylhurst University, just south of Portland, Ore. The event is free and open to the public. Questions above were edited for clarity.

In the 50s and 60s Afghanistan had modern, clean health facilities. Today only 13% of children are born in hospitals. Photo: Daveeza (Flickr)

Recall an Afghanistan you probably forgot existed (or maybe you never knew). It's modern, stylish, and humming with productive economic activity. Women work alongside men dressed in form-fitting pencil skirts and kitten heels.

Foreign Policy's photo essay on Afghanistan in the 50s and 60s provides a glimpse into this bygone era. The photos highlight how much has changed since a war with the Soviets, a decade of Taliban rule, and the U.S. invasion.

There are shots of cinemas, homes lit with electricity, and well-stocked hospitals — things that few Afghans enjoy today.

This visual reminder of a long-lost Afghanistan says more than words ever could about how much conflict and oppression has cost the Afghan people.

In the Gulf area, religious customs and social norms make it a taboo for women to mix publicly with unrelated men, even for trivial purposes. In a male-dominated world, this makes it nearly impossible for women to earn an income. Now, economic necessity is forcing the conservative society to accept the idea of women in the workplace.

Many women-only ventures are being created to bring more women into the country’s workforce. Mega-retailer H&M is opening the first women-only department store in Saudi Arabia. Though small female-run stores already exist, this major venture is a landmark concession by the Saudi Government.

Saudi Arabia’s newest hotel is also women-owned, women-managed, and women-run – from the IT engineer to the electrical engineer. Until January, women could not check into any hotel alone unless accompanied by a male family member or if they had written permission from a male guardian.

Saudi and UAE banks have set up segregated branches for women only. In the UAE, a government holding company has set up an investment company run by women for women. These facilities allow women to manage their finances independently of prying fathers, brothers or husbands.

Home businesses and business dealings are also starting to crop up. The Economist reports, Western female bankers are seizing this opportunity and travel regularly to the region to hold private meetings with female clients in their homes.

Saudi official Faisal bin Muammar said high unemployment among Saudis and the reliance upon seven million foreign workers was forcing the societal change. “We cannot go on having seven million foreigners [at work] and our graduate women in their houses.”

To some, the Gulf’s women-only places are a sign of progress; for others, it simply reinforces gender segregation. Whatever the case, there are still problems for women gaining access to capital. It is difficult for female businesswomen to obtain loans, especially if they are not from prominent families. Even in Bahrain, where nearly one-third of businesses are registered by women, some can only get a business license in their husband's name. This just goes to show that the idea of women in the workplace has yet to fully materialize.

Photo: El Ojo Inoportuno (flickr)

It's well-known that women's empowerment and economic development go hand-in-hand — which is another reason to support a Mexican woman's fight to allow women in rural Oaxaca to vote.

Women can vote in places as conservative as Afghanistan, as repressive as Burma and as closed-off as Bhutan, but the L.A. Times reports that women in rural Oaxacan communities cannot vote or run for office.

One woman, Eufrosina Cruz, is fighting for a change in Oaxaca, Mexico's second poorest state. (Three of four Oaxacans live in "extreme poverty.") Her state governor and Mexican President Felipe Calderon now support a change in legislation, which would grant thousands of Oaxacan women the right to vote and run for office.

Women in neighboring Guatemala can vote. Photo: El Canche