Gender Mainstreaming, Employment and Youth - UNIDO

During implementation of all projects, programmes, and processes the department of TII aims to promote a sustainable economic environment where access to economic resources and market entry are free of any form of discrimination, especially based on sex, and where the benefits of economic growth are equitably distributed. Each project integrates a gender dimension at the design phase and often carries a gender-related component throughout implementation.

Trade, investment, and innovation, encompass areas of technical assistance that offer particularly strong potential to push toward contributions to gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. With an overall objective of helping developing countries and economies in transition to achieve greater industrial competitiveness and innovation, TII designs and implements holistic interventions tailored to specific country needs, all of which feature gender perspectives and a contribution to the wider effort of gender mainstreaming.

The Department works across six strategic thematic areas which improve market access and push economic growth, as well as create jobs. The services are grouped into six modules as follows:

• Improving the business environment
• Industrial modernization and SME clustering
• Mobilizing responsible investment and sustainable technologies
• Boosting innovation
• Promoting quality and standards
• Trade facilitation

Specific components focus on supporting females in acquiring skills and gaining access to resources to enable them to participate effectively in the economic life of their communities. The following sections will provide more details about the work of the individual modules.

This project aims at improving the rate of women trained or participating in strengthening fisheries management capacity. It links the project to existing networks dedicated to women by strengthening their organizations in the fishing industry and / or coastal development to support other initiatives in favor of women in small -scale fisheries at the community level. Also, it shares information on gender with the project participant states allowing them to update their data on gender and transmit them - where appropriate - to the regional centers that care, so that they reflect the realities from the moment. For the STDF project it will include distributing information available on the topic and the important aspects identified (access to credit, SPS, processing of fishery products, value chain).
The project aims at improving gender equality in the fisheries sector, especially in the field of access to training, including information – also about the sources of privileged credits - and the forms of organization to overcome the weaknesses of the individual operators (mainly by promoting cooperatives types of organization).

The project promoted linkages and partnerships between cooperatives and companies and established two export consortia that focused on the production of argan oil. UNIDO assisted predominantly women consortia members to enhance their product quality and to access otherwise inaccessible markets, by training and implementing branding and marketing techniques, offering further technical capacity building workshops for women. As a result of the project, female-headed cooperatives are better integrated into the argan oil value chain and have been involved in achieving a geographical origin standard which enables local communities to retain value added as a result of product upgrading.

The project includes technical assistance and trainings to rural women in three different value chains to set-up and manage cooperatives and groupings, improve agricultural practices, standardize the traditional recipes of processed food products, become compliant with safety and hygienic standards, promote and market their products.

The project includes:

• Awareness raising seminars on technical regulations, standards and quality for women associations;
• Establishment of regional technical standardization committees involving women economic actors;
• Promotion of standards application (training, awareness campaign, etc.) with specific attention to include female entrepreneurs;
• Training of lab technicians, teachers, trainers, corporation managers, selected on a gender-balanced basis;
• Creation of the ECOWAS Quality Awards for recognition of high performing companies, with a dedicated award for women-owned enterprises;
• Strengthening quality excellence centers and facilitating their access to women farmers and entrepreneurs.

The NQI Project aims at supporting the enhancement of the national quality infrastructure. Its purpose is to improve quality, safety, integrity and marketability of Nigerian goods and services and remove technical barriers to trade by having an adequate, effective and sustainable National Quality Infrastructure (NQI) in place, consistent with international and regional principles and practices. In terms of gender mainstreaming activities, the project focuses on two types (defined in the NQIP Gender Strategy): 1) Gender mainstreaming within technical assistance where all activities have been assessed for their potential gender equality impact, relevant objectives designed, means allocated and indicators established for monitoring progress and evaluating results; 2) Gender mainstreaming within project management where all stages of the project cycle are assessed for their potential impact on GEEW objectives.

The project includes: The project targets Sri Lankan SMEs and institutions in in the spices, food and ITO/BPO sectors. Women are heavily involved in trade and will therefore be a target group when it comes to capacity building of SMEs and exporters. Support to those sectors generates positive spill-over effects for rural development and employed women.

UNIDO project aims to maintain and improve the market share of local textile and clothing industry operators in domestic markets and to take advantage of opportunities afforded by prospects of integration within the Customs Union’s trade arrangements. UNIDO supported nine beneficiary enterprises, on a wide range of technical and business issues, including product design and development, quality process, production planning systems, legal matters, standardization, human resources, finance, marketing, networking and project communication. In accordance with the Project Document, the project beneficiary enterprises were selected as pe eligibility criteria targeting at least 30% of pilot beneficiaries are owned or led by female management. The project aims to ensure that women and men equally benefit from capacity building and other activities of the project, equal participation of women and men in both project management arrangements and as beneficiaries, partners and key stakeholders of the project, as well as ensuring coordination among key development actors to further enhance gender mainstreaming and promote gender equality and empowerment of women.