UN Women-IORA Webinar: Overcoming Inequalities through Finance

This webinar is focused on access to financial products and services as a way to economically empower women and reduce inequalities. 

 

As part of the Australian Government funded project on Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Indian Ocean Rim, and in collaboration with the IORA Secretariat, UN Women is producing a series of webinars on the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs).

The WEPs are a set of seven principles that offer guidance to businesses on how to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community. 

This webinar focused on the implementation of Principle 5, specifically, looking at how to address the barriers for women regarding their access to financial products and services. A number of financial institutions, including signatories to the WEPs, have implemented Principle 5, and this webinar showcased their good practices. It highlighted the capacity-building and financial initiatives that leading financial institutions have launched to support women-led micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the Indian Ocean Rim region, particularly in the context of COVID-19.

UN Women moderated the webinar and guest speakers included Margaret W. Kimani, Senior Manager and Head of Women and Youth at State Bank of Mauritius (SBM Bank) in Kenya, and Nicole Christopulo, Strategic Projects Lead – Women in Business with First National Bank (FNB) South Africa. 

A recording of this webinar is available here.

The full list of activities under the IORA-UN Women partnership, supported by the Government of Australia, is available here.