Women Empowerment: A Long Way to Go
Women Empowerment and Gender Equality is still a distant dream for women in many parts of the world.
Mediators have to pitch their services based on the usefulness of the intervention and its prospect of success.
Educating potential clients about our process, our standards of conduct, and the intrinsic value of collaboration is crucial to further the field, but if this explanation does not meet the interests of consumers, people in a dispute won’t agree to participate in mediation.
So what motivates parties in conflict to accept mediation?
As important as impartiality is to the mediation process, for parties in conflict it figures quite low on their priority list. What may be more important when offering mediation services is to emphasize that engaging in a participatory problem-solving process can improve disputants' chances of reaching a favorable outcome and creates more sustainable agreements; that mediation is more cost-effective then litigation or violence; that the process empowers participants to find solutions that meet everyone’s need; and that trying mediation can have a positive impact on how others perceive your role in the conflict.