ILO Brief

Integrating Gender Equality into Agri-SME Competitiveness: Advancing Gender-Transformative Practices in Lebanon’s Agri-Food Sector

This brief showcases how the ILO BOUZOUR project worked with the QOOT Agri-Food Cluster to strengthen competitiveness and gender inclusion in Lebanon’s agri-food SMEs. Through a combination of gender-sensitive training, participatory assessments, coaching support, and practical workplace measures at the enterprise level, the intervention encouraged SMEs to address workplace norms, improve policies on equal pay, parental leave, and harassment prevention, and recognize women as key contributors to innovation and productivity. By linking contract farming, farmer support, and SME capacity building, the intervention demonstrated that inclusion and competitiveness reinforce each other, creating resilient value chains and fostering workplaces where both men and women can thrive.