Gender, poverty and employment in the context of informal economies in Arab States

Project Objective The project aims at: • Promoting decent work for women and men in the informal economy, as a key pathway to reducing poverty and gender inequality, and to achieving sustainable human development in Arab States. • Developing a clearer understanding and better contextualized knowledge on the gendered nature of poverty and employment in the informal economies of the region utilizing a rights perspective. • Contributing to the creation of a more favourable policy and institutional environment and capacities for the working poor, especially women, in the informal economies of the region to be able to exercise their rights. Project Methodology: The project partners, ILO and CAWTAR, will work through a seven-member Advisory Committee consisting of a multidisciplinary team of researchers (economists, sociologists, statisticians) as well as people with policy advisory and technical expertise on related issues. Project Outcomes: • Creation of a Knowledge base though a unified conceptual framework on the nature, extent, size of the informal economy in the Arab region and its related poverty and gender issues. • Re-inforcement of the capacities of specialized national institutions (including statistics and social security) to better manage data (throughout the process of its collection, analysis and utilization) and to improve their responsiveness to the needs of women and men workers in the informal economy in the selected countries of the region. • Enhancement of Knowledge-Sharing mechanisms to raise awareness on the levels of poverty and gender discrimination in the informal economy and to mobilize regional efforts to advocate favourable policy change. Main Activities: Three main components: research, training and policy advocacy. Research: This will mainly consist of : • Production of a conceptual framework: gender and rights issues in understanding the Informal Economy (IE) of the region with a specific focus on statistics and social protection issues; • Five country case studies: empirical analysis based on the current situational and institutional knowledge on IE in the country, through discussions with the project Advisory Committee resulting in a publication , which will include an introduction on the process as well as conclusions on ways forward. • Updating of a booklet on existing gender and labour market related statistics will also be a product from this component of the project. Training: Based on the knowledge created from the project’s research component as well as a thorough review of existing and relevant materials and experiences from ILO and WIEGO on IE statistics and social protection: • A consultant will collect, compare, elaborate and adapt the materials according to the regional context and the target groups of the project. The training materials will focus on applying gender and rights perspectives to the informal economy through three modules (overview, statistics and social protection). • Following the Training of Trainers, the country trainers will be provided with seed grants (one for each country) to work as country teams in implementing the training sessions in their own countries. Advocacy: The advocacy component of the project will be launched using the policy briefs produced based on the knowledge created in the research component of the project. • Advocacy component will be integrated throughout the project activities. It will benefit from synergies with other ILO and CAWTAR platforms, including the annual meetings of CAWTAR’s regional Gender Advisory Network (@NGED) that takes place in December each year. • Country researchers will organize round tables with policy makers in their countries using the policy briefs.

Project symbol

INT/06/29/IDR

Admin unit

RO-Arab States/DWT-Beirut

Start date

15/09/2006

End date

18/03/2008

Total allocation

222148

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

222148

Development Partners

Canada, International Development Research Centre

Country/Countries

Inter-Regional

Outcomes

Increase constituent capacity to develop policies and policy recommendations focused on job-rich growth, productive employment, and poverty reduction