UN Women, EU partner to accelerate women’s employment in Middle East, North Africa

Africa, International

The Surging Women’s Employment Initiative aims to increase women’s employment by 5 per cent by 2030

NEW YORK, United States (NPA) — UN Women and the European Union (EU) have partnered to accelerate women’s employment across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) through the Surging Women’s Employment Initiative (SWEI).

The regional flagship initiative brings together governments, the private sector, financial institutions, development partners, civil society and UN agencies to address the region’s low levels of women’s participation in the labour market.

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The partnership was launched on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly High-Level Week in New York.

The initiative comes at a time when the MENA region has one of the world’s largest youth cohorts entering the labour market, while women’s labour force participation has remained at about 20 per cent on average for more than two decades.

According to the EU and UN Women, narrowing the employment gap between women and men could increase regional gross domestic product by as much as 60 per cent, while generating greater productivity, innovation and economic resilience.

SWEI aims to increase women’s employment by five per cent by 2030, with an overall target of creating 500,000 jobs for women.

The initiative is a key component of the EU’s Pact for the Mediterranean, which supports gender equality in the southern Mediterranean.

With EU support, SWEI will focus on three areas: advancing legal and macroeconomic reforms for private sector-led, job-rich growth; engaging businesses to expand women’s employment; and developing innovative employment models in the care, green and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) sectors.

The initiative will be supported by public-private financing and strategic investment.

European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Šuica, said the EU’s €10 million contribution to SWEI would help turn ambition into action through investment in skills, entrepreneurship and opportunities in sectors with significant potential.

“Through the Pact for the Mediterranean and our €10 million contribution to the Surging Women’s Employment Initiative, we are working with UN Women to turn ambition into action,” Šuica said.

She said the initiative’s overall goal was to create 500,000 jobs for women and increase women’s employment by five per cent by 2030.

UN Women Regional Director for the Arab States, Dr Moez Doraid, said the region could not realise its full economic potential while women remained significantly underrepresented in the labour market.

“Thanks to UN Women’s partnership with the European Union, SWEI is bringing policy reform, investment and private-sector action together around a measurable, time-bound goal: significantly increasing women’s employment in the Arab States by the end of the decade — the target date for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals,” Doraid said.

The partnership builds on commitments by several Arab governments to increase women’s economic participation.

According to the partners, UN Women and its partners have contributed to reforms of 20 laws supporting women’s economic participation, while more than 900 companies in the Arab States have signed the Women’s Empowerment Principles, which set out corporate commitments to gender equality.

The partners said US$25 million in donor funding had been mobilised from Sweden, Spain and Finland, including the EU’s €10 million contribution, alongside financing from the Islamic Development Bank.

UN Women and the EU said the partnership provided a clear example of global efforts to accelerate women’s economic participation and empowerment.