Today IORA supported women’s economic empowerment through the launch of an UN report on progress and challenges on women’s economic empowerment in the Indian Ocean Rim, prepared with contributions from IORA Member States and support from the Australian Government.
The report on “Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Indian Ocean Rim: Progress and Challenges” was launched by IORA Acting Secretary-General, Dr Gatot Hari Gunawan, and Australia’s Senior Official to the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) Dr Christian Hirst, during IORA’s Eleventh Bi-Annual Meeting of the Committee of Senior Officials (CSO) on 15-16 June 2021.
The report supports the commitments made by IORA Member States to promote women’s economic empowerment set out in IORA’s Ministerial Statement of 2017, The Jakarta Concord. The report builds on a 2015 baseline report and explores key gender issues and gaps in the region, in areas such as women’s labour force participation; informal work; occupational segregation; entrepreneurship; unpaid care work; migration; equality under the law; and access to education, finance, skills development, land and productive resources, among other influential resources.
Dr Gunawan said “improved availability of reliable data, combined with the tools to use it, will assist Member States in creating new economic opportunities for women and communities.”
“Australia is pleased to support this tangible contribution to filling the data gap to profile the reality of women’s economic participation in the Indian Ocean region,” said Dr Hirst.
The report is one of two reports delivered under a three-year partnership between IORA and UN Women, supported by the Australian Government. Other elements of the partnership, delivered through training, capacity building and networking opportunities, centred on the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles – guidelines on how to achieve gender equality. This initiative has brought together women entrepreneurs, officials and academics across the region to gain a better understanding on how to enable greater participation of women in the Indian Ocean economies.
This important initiative would not have been possible without the generous support of the Australian Government. A full list of the partnership’s activities and resources are available on the IORA webpage.
For more information about the report or IORA’s work on women’s economic empowerment, contact hq@iora.int.
More information on IORA’s broader work on Women’s Economic Empowerment is available here. #IORA
