NEW YORK, 3. November 2009: The Government of Egypt has announced plans to expand an innovative programme, piloted by UNIFEM, to extend gender equality in private sector companies.
The Gender Equity Model Egypt (GEME) has set up a voluntary certification scheme with minimum standards for hiring, training and promoting women in private sector firms. Companies that meet these standards earn a gender equity seal, which serves as public recognition of their efforts to embrace corporate social responsibility norms for women and promotes a conducive and productive working environment for men and women.
Egypt’s Ministry of Investment will create and fund a new Gender Equality Certification Unit to manage the programme, in cooperation with the National Council for Women and the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration.
GEME has been piloted in ten Egyptian companies. It is one of a series of two-pronged Results-Based Initiatives (RBIs) that are implemented in six countries. Each RBI couples programmes designed to achieve rapid progress in women’s economic empowerment with systematic measurement to prove the most effective intervention points.
UNIFEM partners with the World Bank and the International Center for Research on Women on the RBIs. The World Bank has also announced plans to scale up the GEME through its Small and Medium Enterprise Project in Egypt.
