UN Women – ILO Joint Programme

Promoting decent employment for women through inclusive growth policies and investments in care

The UN Women - ILO Joint Programme aims to promote decent work for women through inclusive growth policies and investments in the care economy. The Joint Programme stands ready to support governments and social partners in implementing gender-sensitive policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis and recovery phase. In these critical times, it is a demonstration of how the United Nations as One is working towards a gender-equitable future.

News | 04 May 2020
The Programme brings together the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, and the United Nations specialized agency devoted to advancing social justice and promoting decent work.

This UN Women-ILO Joint Programme (JP) is focused on achieving three key outcomes:
  • Creating the political consensus for the adoption of macro-level economic policy accelerators that support gender-equitable inclusive growth and more and better jobs for women, through evidence-based policy analysis and advocacy, technical advice and capacity strengthening.
  • Adopting sectoral and industrial policies that tackle occupational and sectoral segregation and enhance women’s access to decent employment opportunities, through policy advice, capacity development and technical support.
  • Ensuring that investments in care service provision – in health, including long-term care, and in education, including in early childhood education – are costed, financed and implemented through policy advice, capacity development and technical support.

The JP will be coordinated by Global Policy Team based in the Employment Policy Department (ILO HQ), and will be implemented in six countries from the Global South jointly by UN Women and ILO field offices. The selection of the final six countries will be based on (a) geographical mix and balance (b) core capacity of UN Women and ILO offices (c) demand from the UN Resident Coordinator and government for programme activities, outputs, and outcomes (d) potential impact on national employment and economic policies that promote gender equality, women’s employment and inclusive growth.

The JP will use a range of implementation modalities, including:
  • Technical policy support (Development of Policy Tools, Policy Research & Analysis, Technical Advisory)
  • Capacity development / Training
  • Knowledge management (A global Community of Practice, including of feminist economists and development practitioners, and promotion of South-South learning exchanges, building national Solution Exchanges and other innovative knowledge platforms for the dissemination of good practices as well as structured platforms to promote policy dialogues among key stake-holders)
  • Policy advocacy (including policy dialogue)

In the UN framework for the immediate socio-economic response to COVID-19, the JP will support country-level work based on the following policy tools:
  • Gender- employment impacts of COVID-19. The assessment of the gendered employment impacts brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and includes an in depth look at relevant sectors/occupations, the persistence of the shocks, and the policies geared toward supporting economic activity and sustaining decent employment in them.
  • Public investment estimates needed to support investments in the care economy sectors, and in particular in the public health sector. This includes costing exercises in the short and medium term, ensuring that the expansion of these sectors create decent work. The tools will also address the sustainability of these investments.
  • Design of gender responsive fiscal stimulus packages by identifying entry points for both cushioning the impacts of the crisis and for ensuring an economic recovery that is gender-responsive, creating job opportunities for all.

Contact persons:
Anuradha Seth
Senior Advisor, Gender and Macroeconomics, UN Women
anuradha.seth@unwomen.org

Valeria Esquivel
Employment Policies and Gender Specialist, ILO
esquivelv@ilo.org