Social Development and Public Governance > Gender Equality in Development
Gender Issues in Technical Training and Vocational Education
By Sarah Howden, Caroline Fawcett (10/98, WID-103, En, Es)
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The overall goal of the Bank´s Women in Development (WID) Policy is to improve the socioeconomic situation of women in Latin America and the Caribbean, and to improve the performance of Bank projects by enhancing women´s contributions.
To achieve these goals, the 1991 WID Action Plan developed an integrative strategy, whereby gender issues would be incorporated into all Bank operations to promote the equal participation of women in project activities, and to ensure that women, as well as men, benefit from these projects. To assist project officers in this task, gender guidelines, or resource books, are being prepared in specific sectors and sub-sectors of Bank activity. These resource books provide project officers with a tool to assist them in ensuring that future Bank projects take into account gender-related factors that will affect the project´s outcome, and make adequate provision for women's participation.
The WID Policy identifies technical training, labor market services and vocational education as priority areas of action since:
- women make up 30 percent of the workforce in Latin America and over 40 percent in the Caribbean;
- increasing urbanization in the region leads an ever growing number of women to join the labor force; and
- the number of households dependent on women´s income is steadily increasing in the region.
Moreover, in order to compete in the global economy, it is critical for the countries of the region to have a better trained, more productive and flexible labor force that is able to respond to changing economic structures and markets (IDB, 1994c). It is particularly important that the quality and relevance of the training that is provided to women be improved so that they can be active participants in and beneficiaries of the development process, and are not further marginalized during this process of economic transformation. The information in this resource book is focused primarily on training issues regarding skills acquisition in the urban manufacturing and service sectors. Forthcoming resource books will focus on agriculture (including extension services) and microenterprise.
Last updated: 06/18/07
