Press Release: UN Women and ILO kick-start training of private sector employees on the use of gender audit

UN Women and the International Labour Organization (ILO) concluded today a four-day training for 15 female and male employees of Bank of Palestine and BirZeit Pharmaceuticals Company on gender audit. The training aimed at fostering the understanding and analysis of gender roles, issues and needs in the workplace, for the 15 employees of Bank of Palestine and BirZeit Pharmaceutics Company who will monitor the implementation of the recommendations of the gender audit currently conducted by UN Women and ILO.

The training is part of a ILO and UN Women “Participatory Gender Approach” pilot intervention towards the private sector to enhance social responsibility of companies and promote increased participation of Palestinian women and equal opportunities in the labour force.

Ms. Sabine Machl, UN Women Special Representative in Palestine commended “the role of Palestinian companies in ensuring better working conditions for women. Equal opportunities are key and accordingly, enhancing effective access and participation of women in decision-making processes are fundamental prerequisites.”

Mr. Mounir Kleibo, ILO Country Representative in Palestine, explained that “the Participatory Gender Approach is a tool and a process that identifies the most important gaps and challenges, and recommends more effective solutions and new strategies, enhances the companies’ capacity to assess its activities, identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the gender sensitivity at the company/entity level, monitors the success of the company from a gender lens, in addition to encouraging institutional ownership of related interventions.”

The Participatory Gender Approach enhances both individual and institutional learning for effective gender mainstreaming at work, and can be achieved through aligning the Internal practices of the companies to ensure gender mainstreaming, and assessing whether these practices and regulations are effective, complementary and applied from a gender lens. ILO has been the first organization to provide a participatory approach for gender audit in the State of Palestine through training a national team on the Participatory Gender Approach. The national team has since then been working with the Palestinian Ministry of Labour, the Union of Workers, the Union of Chambers of Commerce and Agriculture among other Palestinian institutions

The Participatory Gender Approach intervention is implemented under the UN Women “Spring Forward for Women Programme” funded by the European Union and UN Women, and as part of the SDG Fund joint programme “Creating a one-stop-shop for sustainable businesses” implemented by UN Women.