Interest in Women’s Empowerment Principles increasing in Georgia
Date:
More private businesses in Georgia are getting interested in implementing and supporting the Women’s Empowerment Principles: Equality Means Business (WEPs).
Considering this interest, UN Women aims to support awareness-raising among these companies, as well as facilitate a dialogue and/or information sharing between them and those business organizations that were the first to make strides towards implementing the WEPs in Georgia.
One such training on the WEPs was held for 11 private companies from 16 to 18 April 2019. Among them were business organizations from the fields of finance, transportation, education, consulting and media. The main topics covered in the training included gender equality and corporate sustainability, the barriers that women encounter in the workplace and in the labour market, the practical implementation of the WEPs and opportunities for their planning, implementation and advocacy. In addition, the participating companies, which had already taken substantial steps in regard to the WEPs, presented their existing approach for supporting gender equality.
“The training enhanced our knowledge on gender equality and the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations,” remarked training participant Tamta Aslanishvili, head of the Marketing Department of the microfinance organization Micro Business Capital. “This meeting will be an incentive for us to actively start working on an action plan and to take effective steps with the purpose of prioritizing women’s economic empowerment and developing gender-sensitive policy. We are willing to communicate the received information to all staff members and conduct respective trainings within the organization. We also want to form a group to work on the action plan and unite representatives of various managerial levels with the company’s supervisory board.”
It is noteworthy that all of the participating companies will share the acquired knowledge and information within their organizations and train their staff, with the assistance of UN Women.
More than 2,000 business leaders worldwide have joined the WEPs, a joint initiative of UN Women and the UN Global Compact. Since 2017, UN Women, with the active support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway, has been working intensively to increase the number of companies that are WEPs signatories. UN Women has been working to expand the WEPs in Armenia and Azerbaijan since 2018 in cooperation with UNDP, with the financial support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Austrian Development Agency.