International Women's Day - Women Economic Empowerment in Kuwait

To celebrate International Women’s Day this year, the Supreme Council for Planning and Development and the Women’s Research and Studies Center/Kuwait University, in partnerships with the UN in Kuwait, UNDP and UN Women, will be holding a discussion panel to highlight the importance of Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE) in contributing to the achievement of sustainable development, to discuss the role of Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) as a set of principles offering guidance to businesses on how to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community, and to share and promote achievements and initiatives undertaken by the private sector as well as UNDP and UN Women in promoting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 on gender equality and women’s empowerment, in particular  economic empowerment of women in their workplaces and communities. Optimizing women’s perspectives, skills and innovative ideas – whether in the markets or workplaces – is key to business development and inclusive development.

“A new approach to financing where public and private sector investments are tailored to women’s and girls’ needs, can transform the technology and innovation ecosystem,” said Susanne Mikhail, UN Women Regional Director for the Arab States. “If we apply strategic financial levers such as public sector digital programmes, research grants and procurement, and private sector investments, we can transform innovation ecosystems. Public and private sectors must fund gender analysis and interventions in all digital policies and programmes, research grants and procurement,” she added.  “UN Women has prioritized innovation and technology as one of the drivers of change to achieve gender equality and the SDG.