Equality of Opportunity in Education and Training - National Technological Apprenticeship Institute (INATEC) - Nicaragua

The INATEC was formed in 1991 to provide guidance on occupational training. It has an institutional policy which includes the formulation and implementation of special programmes that focus on women. A specific department has been set up within INATEC's special programmes directorate in order to promote strategies that will enable women to enjoy equal training opportunities and give them greater access to the labour market. This institution has formulated a policy which takes the needs of young women into account and which:

• as an institutional policy promotes technical training for young people, and especially young women, in order to give them greater access to the labour market; and,
• takes into account, in the formulation of policies, the requests of the beneficiaries, as determined through regional surveys carried out by INATEC (a major theme of these requests has been for technical training for women that will enable them to find employment).

It operates the Programa de Capacitación en igualdad de oportunidades, en empleos no tradicionales e identidad de género. The objectives of the programme are to:

• provide technical training for women so that they can obtain access to the labour market;
• contribute through a specific gender-oriented methodology to the training of women and their integration in the development process;
• provide managerial training for women; and,
• provide credit to women as part of the policy of generating employment through the establishment of their micro-enterprises.