Women’s economic empowerment

Women’s economic empowerment is essential to realizing women’s rights and achieving gender equality. In the Arab region, the gender gap remains wide in terms of economic participation and opportunity, despite the priority given to women’s economic empowerment in Arab development agendas and women’s high levels of education. 

Women’s labor force participation remains the lowest globally, and they remain widely underrepresented in high-paid and high-level managerial positions and in certain sectors dominated by men. 

Our approach

ESCWA supports its member States in promoting women’s economic empowerment and reducing gender economic inequalities by undertaking the following: 

1. Addressing unpaid care work considered as a major barrier to women’s economic participation, and guiding efforts at the legislative, policy and programme levels towards increasing this participation; 

2. Promoting women’s entrepreneurship as a key channel to women’s economic participation. 

Our partners

National women’s machineries, non-governmental organizations advocating women’s rights, government institutions.

Our activities

ESCWA prepares studies on the different aspects of women’s economic empowerment, namely women’s unpaid care work and entrepreneurship. It holds regional consultations and expert group meetings to translate knowledge into concrete actions and capitalize on regional and international experiences, and produces advocacy tools to highlight the importance of women’s economic participation and empowerment for societies, households and economies.