UNIDO recognizes that gender equality and the empowerment of women are key to achieving inclusive and sustainable industrial development. UNIDO promotes gender equality through the mainstreaming of gender considerations into all its policies, programmes and organizational practices, as well as through targeted technical cooperation projects.

Although there have been significant achievements over the last decades, women’s socioeconomic disadvantage is still reflected in pervasive gender inequalities in earned income, access to productive resources such as credit and assets, educational attainment, liberty to pursue a profession, and time- use. This is a significant missed opportunity. Not only is gender equality an important goal in its own right, but it also correlates with higher levels of per capita gross domestic product, the level of innovation and competitiveness, and human development.

Industrialization directly affects women’s roles and participation in the labour force and economic life in general. Industrial strategies and policies have the potential to decrease existing gender-based discrimination and become a tool for the empowerment of women if properly designed and implemented.

The lack of knowledge about gender mainstreaming in industrial development strategies constrains the gathering of sex-disaggregated data and the development and implementation of gender-responsive industrial policies and programmes.

To address these knowledge gaps, as part of UNIDO's gender mainstreaming efforts and its strategy for gender equality and the empowerment of women, UNIDO has developed a training programme on gender responsive inclusive and sustainable industrial development. Find more information below and in the flyer below the main text.