equals in tech award ceremony, which is not to miss. I hope you're all going to be there for that. Very exciting. We had some unbelievable nominees, and the winners are also incredible. I had a sneak preview of the profiles of those winners. And those are the kinds of examples that we need to promote, we need to talk about, and we need to support, because it is small things that can actually scale and ramp up and make an impact in closing the digital gender gap in terms of entrepreneurship and in terms of making women equal partners in the digital ecosystem. So with that, I want to thank everyone again for being here. I want to thank our partners. And I believe we're going to be handing, maybe I should hand back to you, Danala, who you can now see, as she will tell us who's going to jump in next. But thanks again for being here for this important effort. Thank you. Thank you so much, Doreen, for those inspiring words. Now we'll hear from Deborah Gibbons, the CEO of Marrakeh Global. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure to be with you today from Marrakeh's headquarters in Dallas, Texas. I would like to thank Doreen and her team at the International Telecommunication Union for hosting us today. And our WEA partners for organizing this event as we celebrate WEA's third anniversary. The topic of today's events, women's entrepreneurship is driving innovation, is personal to Marrakeh. Our company is, at its core, an entrepreneurship development company. Whether it's supporting our independent beauty consultants as they develop and sustain their business or procuring services from women-owned companies, we are committed to creating a pathway for women to thrive. This focus on entrepreneurship development has, at its origins, our founder, a trailblazing entrepreneur, Marrakeh Ash, created a company which offered women an opportunity that had been denied to them by corporate America. In 1963, when barely a third of American women were in the workforce, she developed a retail business plan and identified beauty products as the vehicle for women to advance their economic status. Her business plan was focused on nurturing women's entrepreneurship through access to education, training, innovation, mentoring, and networking. Her dream of elevating entrepreneurship as a profession has blossomed, and today, Marrakeh is operating in nearly 35 markets around the globe. In 2019, taking the vision of our founder further, we formed a novel partnership with the United Nations, the Women's Entrepreneurship Accelerator, or WEA. With our six UN partners here today, we are committed to creating an enabling ecosystem for women entrepreneurs to maximize their development impact. We know the positive impact which gender-inclusive innovation ecosystems can bring about. Women entrepreneurs are more likely to invest to their earnings and their family's welfare, thus strengthening their communities. And because women-owned businesses also tend to employ more women, supporting women entrepreneurs helps bring more women to the labor force. Research shows that innovations by women tend to offer solutions to neglected issues, which address significant social needs. In developing countries, women-owned businesses make up 17% of all businesses and a further 35% to aspire to do so in the future. If these women entrepreneurs enjoyed the same access to resources, including digital tools and opportunities as their male counterparts, think about the ripple effect on their economies. It would also enable these women to accumulate earnings, assets, and economic power, all of which are key to tackling inequalities. Let me turn to the role of innovation in the digital economy. The global pandemic transformed the landscape, challenging entrepreneurs to pivot to digital. This transformation offers tremendous opportunities to advance women's economic status by addressing mobility and time constraints, by opening up access to knowledge in international markets and enabling women to engage with a broader network. However, we know the digital acceleration can perpetuate inequalities and the benefits are not always equally balanced. We must address these inequities and create an environment for women to fully participate in a digital economy. At Mary Kay, our digital ecosystem has expanded over the years to empower and support the needs of our independent beauty consultants and their customers. We've invested in the development and roll out of innovative tools and applications from award-winning apps featuring augmented reality to connecting independent beauty consultants with their customers in more effective and seamless ways. Mary Kay is also a proud commitment maker to the Generation Equality Action Coalition on technology and innovation. The digital economy won't wait for anyone to catch up. And by also prioritizing gender-responsive procurement, creating a conducive policy environment, increasing the capacity of women entrepreneurs to attract investment and growing their business skills, WEA is focusing on designing an inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem. Foundational to each of these WEA priorities is the use of digital technologies. You will hear firsthand from our U.N. partners in a few minutes on the amazing initiatives they have developed to foster change. Creating a truly inclusive economy is too big a feat for just one company or one industry to shoulder. We need more cross-sectoral partners to scale this work. With WEA, we have a turnkey platform to shape a more equal and inclusive digital marketplace in society. Let's not miss out on this golden opportunity. Thank you. We're very grateful for those wonderful remarks there from Mary Kay. Just before we start the fireside chat, can I please ask the speakers to please pose for a picture together? And then we'll go to the next bit of the agenda, which will be the fireside chat. Maybe standing might be best, just a few or don't mind. Thank you so much. So now we move on to the next bit on the agenda, which will be the fireside chat. It will be moderated by Marco Bisso, our head of Cybersecurity Division and Chief of the Digital Network Society Department here in the ITU. Thanks for being here with us, Marco, and I hand it over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Dunola, and hi, everyone, in presence and off-site. And thanks again to also the participant off-site that have provided a video message. Thanks, Doreen, for your work that's usually inspiring. I'm already converted, so no need here. Maybe let's try to convert someone else. So, well, this is a fireside chat, but the finishing is a chat. So let's try to get a little bit more informal here. So remove your shoes.  You can bring it back at the end of the chat. So my name is Marco. I'm leading one of the department in BDT School Network with Digital Network Society. And one piece, one big piece of the work is, of course, on digital inclusion and on gender and Generation Connect, which Dunola is working on. So again, I think this issue is really at the core of some of the work that I'm doing and that we are doing collectively. So I have here two esteemed guests, Pamela Cocca-Hemilton, which is the executive director of ITC, International Trade Center, and Giveris, which is the director of the UNDP office in Geneva. And we're going to have a little chat about how we could actually caring of strengthening, fostering, and promoting some of the principles that, of course, Doreen mentioned. But overall, how we can really generate an impact within the framework or way of the women and entrepreneurship accelerator. So just let me start with a couple of things like housekeeping. Of course, the session is recorded, so you can access later. We have in-person and off-site, as I said. So there will be video messages from other speakers that couldn't be here today. That would be at the end of the little chat. And then we have also hashtags. So if you want to access social media, like sheet rates, and women entrepreneurs, and gender equality, so that would be a good way to get in touch. OK, so a couple of questions to both of you at the beginning. A bit about how, let's say, this topic and generally where I can get, I mean, can align a bit with, which is already, but how we can carry on alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals. We are, I think, eight years, a little bit, maybe less, seven years to 2030. 2030 was supposed to be the date to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. There is a little bit skepticism around if we are going to do that or not. For sure, there are issues or, let's say, barriers, like conflicts, like climate change, the cost of living. And there were several articles, even from the UN, about how these can be obstacles, COVID, of course, to the achievement of the goal. But despite that, the UN also is investing a lot in gender. And as Doreen said, there is a significant return of investment in having women engaged into the entrepreneurship and to the leadership roles and everything. So there is an obstacle and opportunity at the same time. So Pamela, how, for example, ITC is managing that? How is addressing the gender piece and what you are doing as an organization to address the kind of challenges? Thanks so much, Marco. It's really good to be here. Thank you for having me here. And congratulations to Doreen. I didn't know yet and take nop yet. When is it? How many more days? Oh, days. OK. We're counting the days. OK. OK, well, we'll celebrate again on the 1st of January. But thank you also to our partners who've joined with this amazing women's entrepreneurship accelerator. And congratulations on the third anniversary. I think that we have a great opportunity to do a lot more together. And I think that as we move forward into what Marco has described as the multiple crises that we're facing, I think we have to learn to pivot and we have to be more responsive in ways that actually enable women to achieve their long-term goals. I think one of the things that we also need to look at is that regardless of age, of ethnicity, nationality, wherever we're coming from, as women, we pretty much all face similar challenges. There's no rubric that prevents us as women from facing the same issues. And so I think our ability to pull together as women in policymaking and providing equal opportunity, I think, is going to be important. There's also now new statistics that this 132-year gap, which frankly is now apparently 300 years, it's not very encouraging. But I'm an optimist. I do not think that I tend not to believe in these huge numbers. And I'll tell you why. About 33, 34. Anyway, 1989, it's a long time. Some of you weren't born. But in 1989, as on a diplomatic training program in Germany, in Berlin. And it was in the middle of East Berlin, but it's West Berlin. So it was the Middle East. Whatever. And so the first program as a young officer, and I asked the professor on this diplomatic training program, because as representing Jamaica, I said, you know what? With all this Glasnost and Perestroika, what do you think is going to happen at the Berlin Wall? And do you think it's going to have an impact, et cetera? And he absolutely said no, under no circumstances. It's going to take 10, 15 years for something like this to happen. Needless to say, by November 1989, I was climbing the wall, dancing on it, and drinking champagne. And so what I'm saying is that a lot of times these predictions tend not to take humanity into.  I mean, things can happen in a day. And so I operate from that standpoint that things can happen in a day and that every crisis presents its own opportunity. And I think this particular crisis or multiple crises that we're going through does present that opportunity. Because what it does do is allow us to recalibrate the way we're going to build back better and how we're going to move forward to make our economies more equal. And so I think for us, it's putting more women at the center of the rebuilding of the empowerment and of the recovery. Doreen mentioned some statistics about the trillions of dollars that are lost when women are not included in the economic development. The fact that you can preclude 50% of your populace from engaging is kind of silly by anybody's estimation. And therefore, one would think that common sense would begin to prevail on this. ITC specifically, what we've been doing is one, we've been working more with the private sector, trying to ensure that we begin to work at the level where the women are at. We also are working at the policy level. How do we engage at the policy level to look at issues like gender responsive procurement, looking at issues like encouraging women to become part of the system as opposed to being outside the system, moving more women from informal into formal so that their voices can be heard. Advocacy is important. We've also looked at the partnership, of course, with the women's entrepreneurship accelerator and with Mary Kay, and we launched 27 courses, basically the A to Z of entrepreneurship. I think I should study it myself because it's very important for women to get the kind of training and resources and knowledge to enable them to do this and do it effectively. We launched what I call the gender moonshot earlier this year. And it was a recognition that gender is important, but even more important than gender is ensuring that we are upping the ante in terms of what we want to deliver for women. I'm one of those who I believe in trade agreements. I believe in agreements. I believe in ensuring that we agree on things. But one of my difficulties is that that agreement tends not to translate into reality. And so one of the areas for the moonshot is how do we translate all the things that we've said, all the agreements that we've had into on the ground reality for women in the workplace and elsewhere. One of the other areas we've been looking at is how do we empower girls? I always think about Desmond Tutu's statement that we need to stop asking, well, we need to stop pulling people out of the river and asking why they're falling in in the first place. And we have a tendency to try to solve the problem at the end rather than at the beginning. What's happening with the girls? I was in Niger for the AU summit two weeks ago and I met with the president of Niger. And he, which was very frankly encouraging, the president of Niger basically said, we have a problem with girls. They're getting married at 14 and having children. And by the time they're 20, they already have four or five. So that immediately puts them at a disadvantage vis-a-vis women's economic empowerment or anything else.  How do we expand to actually begin to look at where the problems start? And how do we ensure that women are empowered to move forward there? The second thing is that besides the woman's entrepreneurship accelerator and ensuring digital engagement, because one of the things we found also in COVID was that if you were online, your ability to survive was multiplied by a multi-factor because you're online. If you were not, you were not going to survive. And so that's very important. The access to digital and the ability to afford this is important. The second is the agriculture and the fact that women are 50% of the agricultural sector, but they have less access to land, less access to finance, less access to technology and the new climate smart agriculture. So that's an area that we think is important and we're working on that. And then the third is looking at what Doreen mentioned about the profitable sectors. The most profitable sectors are instead. And where are the women? Not very present. It's up 32%, but I really think in some cases, it's actually five, depending on where you are, 32% must be Europe or the United States. But in part of the world that I come from, I don't think it's that high. And so we want to be able to ensure that more and more girls are getting involved in this aspect so that by the time they get to 25, they're actually writing, AI and all the various things that matter to us. And I'll end with one last anecdote. One of the things that has concerned me also is if we have less women and also less women of color in spaces like this, then we have less responsive decisions and technology working for us. I was at COP 27 and it was wonderful. Egypt is glorious and Sharma Sheikh was wonderful. Huge thing. First of all, I decided after the second day that the reason we're having issues is because there were no women in the planning. That was clear to me. One bathroom, of course, there were lines for the woman's bathroom continuously. You had to kind of strategize which time you were going to take to get there in order to get in. There was no water available, generally speaking. Eventually water came in. There was no process by which you could get food properly. There was one food place with little pockets around but there was no. So in other words, when women are not included in certain fundamental decisions about structure and about it affects everything. And to people, it's the little things but the little things are the big things. And so the issues of even things like makeup and hair and all their black women in here, there's a huge study now about what's happening with black women and how many of us have been having endocrine issues, endometriosis all linked to the chemicals that we have to put in our hair in order to fit into places like this so that it's straight. Sorry. So no, these are realities. And so if you have less women and women of color who understand the challenge then we continue to have difficulty. I'll stop there. Thanks. Wow, thank you. That's sweet. No, no. I think you really hit the main points and I mean I don't think I need to add anything else but inclusion empowerment. I mean, that's something that it should go all over the place every time. Okay, maybe from your side maybe you can also give a perspective from UNDP and what your team personally what UNDP is doing in the same sphere. Thank you very much. It's actually very difficult to add to this after Doreen and Pamela and also I don't want to make the picture even dire that it's already sounds like. I have a lot of statistics here that I was supposed to be sharing with you but I feel like then the fireside chat becomes a little bit of a depression therapy in this room but I do want to say though that I think we've had this challenge for so many years just in my career working in development. I do feel that the numbers are the same but recently they gotten even worse. And I think that's the major problem. So that's kind of what I want to add to these statistics and the quotes about women. I mean, partially it's the pandemic which reversed the advancement that we had and some of the critical gains that we had on women's participation whether it's economic, political or social and now partially this kind of compounded crisis that we are facing. But I think one of the things that the pandemic actually showed of the reason why we see this reverse and that actually emphasizes the problem that we have with that is that even when women are gaining per se in their economic and political and social advancements a lot of the times it's really restricted to sectors, to areas, to approaches that are short term that are not sustainable that are really hanging on a couple of particular anchors. So who is hit first? The small entrepreneurs who are the small entrepreneurs a lot of the women who are like self-made one who is also the gray economy, the gig economy all of these that puts also women in that category that I mean, partially it's those that were already kind of near poverty or near on that line. But what we also see now is that this kind of crisis we are facing whether it's a pandemic or now the consequences of war and energy security, food security that we actually have this layer of a bit of a middle layer who were not poor enough to benefit from support before or the social safety nets, they were okay but they were also not established rich and kind of anchored enough that allows them to have the kind of safety nets behind them that would allow them to gap such uncertain times. So there is this kind of in between middle layer that falls through the cracks because they are not caught up by the social protection systems but they also not benefiting from the usual kind of self protection systems that are there. So this I think is particularly hitting women and what we also see is hitting women not only in developing countries but we see now developing country affects statistics in developed countries even just if you look at Europe my own country coming from Hungary we can see the impacts that we have not seen before. So this is again, I don't want to be depressive but I think we need to take this very, very seriously and that's why even though we are addressing this with certain programs and certain initiatives what we are all collectively struggling with is scale it's connections, it's systemic solutions it's basically the kind of linkages that we want to see between climates and gender equality, women's engagement we want to see between economic empowerment and so forth. So from UNDP's perspective where we are focusing is this it's trying to see how we can bring in some kind of system thinking to that and address the issue not just by our usual way as the UN or development programs which is let's create a project, let's create a program and then we will address this packet of women and that community and the but how can we do it in a way that we actually work with those who can provide a long-term solution whether it's women's chamber of commerce whether it's local governments we have a program on mayor's economic development that we'll actually then look at systemic solutions that eventually will benefit also women and I think these kinds of approaches on accelerators innovative solutions is an extremely accord to it because when we talk about innovation we don't mean innovation that we need a technical solution or a new gadget or an app or something that's very important that it's part of it but innovation should be about also how we are dealing with policies with kind of new ways of engagement how we are connecting private sector and the public sector so I think it's underestimated because when we say innovation people have a certain image of it and we're really trying to advocate that innovation is about systemic change innovation is about if you define it it's about doing things differently in new ways that will generate different results so in that sense it really has to focus on transformation so how we can create an environment in which transformation is possible and that this transformation is actually to impact that scale so without being very theoretical but I just wanna give you a few examples of how we translate that into the ground if you look at for example the policy level we are working together with some of the other agencies the World Bank and governments and all involved in this looking at how actually financing public and private financing is structured in countries because at the end of the day you will see you have to follow the money in some ways where the investment is that's when you will see the output so we're working on the so-called integrated national financing frameworks which really look at the SDGs and the sustainable development goals but very clearly trying to align gender related outcome climate related outcome to public budgeting public financing but also with policy decisions that governments make on how they incentivize private financing going to different outcomes and this includes some board or development programs we means financial inclusion programs for example in Bangladesh we developed an e-market for female owned kind of apparel shops that are now accessing new customers segments and this was incentivized by a systemic approach of policy changes but also empowerment training and a number of things that need to come together also we have some very good examples in Mexico where we working on the financial inclusion of indigenous female agricultural cooperatives so there are a lot of things you can bring together where you actually support for example the indigenous cultures and the traditional trade of women we had a program actually with Mary Kay in China where we were supporting some of the special trades of women to bring them out of this kind of poverty or social economic issues and we had another program we were trying to help women with the embroidery if you can picture this really colorful embroidery and silver trade that some of the traditional clothing that it's wear it's worn in certain areas so you know how can you keep that traditional culture but use it for lifting out people out of their situation and connecting it to what is kind of like a part of the economic system so one example was here to connect them with the fashion industry and online commerce and trade so what used to be a little activity at home of doing this embroidery for themselves was then connected to really high kind of fashion industry and then the e-commerce on online trading so these are just some of the examples of how this can be translated and I think you will have some other questions as well but just to mention that of course the women innovators program we have several examples in the Arab states we have in Central Asia and Eastern Europe as well where we're focusing on kind of regional acceleration programs that really trying to bring this systemic change forward that I mentioned and women entrepreneurs across the region are now bringing these innovative solutions back into the process so they can also kind of feedback and see how to do this differently and if you allow me just one little point I wanted to make on what Pamela was saying it's on STEM, women and STEM I think that's a perfect example how somehow the connections can be made better because in general terms I can say without exaggeration that without exaggeration but maybe with a bit of generalization that the education system of today is putting out educated people who are actually not fit for the job market I think that's kind of generally true if you look at what the skill sets universities provide and then the private sector spends endless resources or retraining them and training them in the way that they can be employed and this is even more prominent in the STEM sectors and especially when it comes to women so I think one of the things we're trying to do is how you bring together this kind of public education sector together with the private sector that has an interest of actually getting qualified people out of the universities and then bring that together with the empowerment of women and the whole economic impact that was mentioned before so we can zoom in on several things that do bring systemic change and I really hope that our education system globally will hopefully catch up with the world at some point and this could be to me an obvious candidate where we can do much more together. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so we don't have much time but I found this interaction very interesting so let me ask a quick question just to be again more a little bit more provocative increase the level of depression so altogether we can go to a psychotherapist for a common collective session. So okay, so Pamela you mentioned issues, common sense I mean fact maybe not for everyone but I mean we know both of you mentioned initiatives undertaken by ATC, UNDP, ITU is undertaking initiative I'm sure that we pick up an issue that is related to this domain and there is someone that is doing something now the question is why we don't advance or we advance at the pace that we would like to do more on that why I mean we are not slowing down but why we are not so fast, okay? So it's a question of we don't talk to each other within the UN, within the community large everyone wants to keep things in his or her own garden I mean it's a question of malacos systematici or lack of a systemic approach so the power of partnership is there everyone is talking about that SDG 17 is about partnership but still there is a certain, at least I feel you know being there for a long time a certain, you know the issue I mean for a short time Exactly, about you know so what I mean just two minutes just a quick reflection then we close it up and then we have the messages from the others but I wanted to tap in your brain on that because I mean you mentioned initiatives there are so many the initially why we cannot work together? Well if we could solve that then we wouldn't all be sitting here because I think there are two issues one that there is a systemic problem in that it's what I call chasing the money everybody wants to survive as entities and we don't get enough regular budget so everybody starts chasing projects and in chasing the projects you get money and then people want to retain the money or they want to retain their jobs and so there's a turf battle that takes place across the board and I've seen it everywhere and it's very distressing but you know that's it is what it is so I think partnerships like what we're doing here is actually a great example of how we can you know kind of begin to merge and create synergies and also not overlap you know share information make ourselves more effective etc but I think that at the root also is a second problem and for me the second problem is that we tend to continue to engage as the UN system as you know international organizations in what I call helicopter technical assistance which is we create things and we enjoy ourselves creating things and then we tell countries what we're going to do for them and I've been on the other side so I know what it's like and there are two things that happen one that there's a lack of absorptive capacity and so everybody comes at them with something you know so you have ITC and UN women and everybody's throwing something at them what are we supposed to do with this? One, two, nobody asks them in the first place we sit out here deciding oh this would be great or this would- So no listening to the- There's no discussion or if there is it's very you know oh yeah okay that sounds good let me twist it this way and see if it will work for you So I think there needs to be what I call embedded technical assistance that is responsive to what is on the ground and building it in to systems and organizations that already exist there so that what we are actually doing is working with and through the organizations that have been on the ground that understand that the landscape that know what will work and what won't that know the sensitivities and so you know we can that's my view Yeah, well thanks a lot I absolutely and fully agree with Pamela and maybe just to use a metaphor to describe how this manifests itself I mean women don't wake up in the morning that you know I want from this organizations and education from my government a little bit of financing and maybe the private sector will give me a job they want a solution to their problem and it's not them who is compartmentalizing the response to this it's us we are the ones who because of our structural setup we are creating the silos that we keep talking about that we'd like to close the demand is not siloed the root organizations that you're referring to and the structures are not siloed we are siloed and we are because of our mandates our financing structures you're unable to get out of this so I think that's unfortunately a structure issue it's not just a U.M. it's a general development humanitarian whatever response community that you want to vote so you know it's almost like somebody wants spaghetti bolognese they want that I Italian yes you know they want the pasta with the sauce and the meat they don't want the pasta from someone then tomorrow someone will give you the meat and maybe you get the sauce at some point so I look at it this way and I think this is really important and perhaps just one other little issue in terms of how to deal with that or what is the problem I think it's also because we are I mean you mentioned partnerships and I think that's a good way of course to describe it that's how we usually do it but we're uncomfortable with working with those who are not like us so that's I think another honest response to this we work you know somebody said it at the beginning we're talking to the converted there are the non-converted and how are we trying to reach them that's one the second is usually the women we actually work with are those who want to work with us but there are other women there who we may be a little bit more uncomfortable or not able to reach and there are many others that could be labored with gender or other things so I think we have to push ourselves and go out there and to work with those who don't want to work with us otherwise we're not going to solve the problem thank you I agree of course and well I consider this is really a call for action for everyone because I think you know if we start talking to ourselves and you know a little bit more frankly and go to over give and take rather than saying why this is what I'm doing and that's it you know maybe we could change a little bit by the way I do a fantastic spaghetti alla bolognese so maybe that could be a way you know to get everyone together around food yeah all right good okay so we have we stop here because we don't have much time we had three video messages from Big Van Wuren which is the assistant director and job for job and social protection and director of enterprise department at the ILO long title I'm sure he will have some lots to say then Sandau Giambu which is the assistant secretary general and the CEO of the UN Global Compact and then Anita Bhattia which is the assistant secretary general and the deputy executive director of UN women before lunch in that I really want to thank you both of you thanks a lot it was really fun thank you just a big applause and then let's go with the videos thanks a lot hi everyone let me begin by congratulating the woman's entrepreneurship accelerator partners for the ongoing collaboration as we mark the third anniversary of this partnership joining forces with like minded and results oriented allies like you enables us to build continuity which is otherwise unattainable or its own by working together we can certainly succeed in our collective goal of supporting women entrepreneurs globally a fellow citizen a dreamer once said that freedom cannot be achieved unless women have been emancipated from all forms of oppression these are the words of Nelson Mandela in 2004 today those words sound truer than ever we are failing at delivering the promise of the agenda 2030 for an inclusive and sustainable development if we continue in this path it is urgent to make the necessary changes in the way we produce transformation and deliver that transformative agenda gender equality and woman entrepreneurship is a key driver of social and economic development it is estimated that women own and manage more than one third of micro small and medium enterprises including as self-employed workers yet women tend to be less active globally than men when it comes to startup activity representing two out of every five early stage entrepreneurs that are active globally additionally barriers for women in business still exist everywhere due to unequal access to finance and professional education as well as participation in global value chains this global gender gap is even more exacerbated in sectors linked to innovation and technology for instance women are underrepresented in strategic sectors for the future of work such as science technology engineering and mathematics this underrepresentation in STEM means women are missing out on the innovation market related salaries and entrepreneurship opportunities in these fields while in turn innovation is missing out on diversity more women in these sectors would fill the gaps of a grain demand for digital specialists innovation and digitalization can lead to greater opportunities and can help accelerate the achievement of the SDGs ILO's 2021 crystallizes the opportunities and the positive impacts of the adoption of digital technologies by MSM MSEs as per the report digital technologies first of all increase access to information and improve MSEs ability to communicate they help companies to trade more easily and across greater distances with both customers and supply chain partners they offer greater financial opportunities with the addition of digital finance services and open up new pathways towards MSE formalization they foster entrepreneurship by providing new opportunities for ongoing businesses and offer more opportunities to MSEs to operate more sustainably at the same time going digital can present challenges to small businesses particularly those led by women limited access to digital infrastructure low readiness to adopt digital technologies technical and soft digital skills shortages as well as digital security and data protection among the various challenges that MSEs face when importing the incorporating digitalization moreover women entrepreneurs face additional constraints imposed by their social environment including restrictive gender role expectations restricted access to education and finance and higher non-business limitations on time and mobility for women entrepreneurs digital technologies can potentially enhance management practices improve market intelligence and create virtual access to regional and global value chains by supporting women entrepreneurs in the transition to digital we can ensure they benefit from the full potential of new technology while simultaneously ensuring that digital adoption does not compromise decent work we must collaborate on fostering a more inclusive environment that enables women to innovate and embrace digitalization ensuring a gender lens innovation and digitalization approach is key to not perpetuating gender stereotypes or magnifying the gender gap to achieve this all actors involved in the entrepreneurship ecosystem should work on structural measures to promote gender sensitive innovation which include investing in education and capacity building boosting evidence-based research and making it simpler for women entrepreneurs to launch new businesses especially in new and non-traditional sectors the Islay's contribution to evidence-based advocacy under this partnership and beyond sheds light on the gender gaps that women have to overcome to start a business innovate and compete in digital spaces the Islay women's entrepreneurship development program works to address some of these barriers with holistic intervention approaches and models at the policy level the Islay wed has developed a framework to evaluate the conditions affecting women's entrepreneurship at the country level the women's entrepreneurship development assessment is a research tool that proposes six key framework conditions for women entrepreneurship development along with a thorough methodology for gathering and combining data into an actionable report in it we look at the access to information and communication technologies and our findings corroborate what has already been shared there are few and space programs specifically aimed at ensuring proper access and control over ICTs women's access to technology may be improving though their more limited exposure to its varied uses means technology's potential to support enterprise creation consolidation and growth remains limited by assessing these framework conditions including ICTs the IOC support national stakeholders to identify targeted and strategic recommendations that can unleash the potential of women entrepreneurs to generate the decent jobs for themselves and others partnerships such as the women entrepreneurship accelerator with specialized agencies coming together to align efforts can deliver real transformative change all the WEA partners are carrying out outstanding work in paving the way for more inclusive entrepreneurship environment with innovation at its core this includes ITU for the launch of their innovation challenges the ITC for their cutting-edge online training programs and UN woman and UNGC for pushing the thinking and actions around gender responsive public procurement I commend you all for the impressive work done so far as part of this vital partnership innovation is the catalyst for human growth it is about new ideas and ways of working we must see gender inclusive innovation as an immense opportunity for development and take action to collectively find solutions that meet the needs of women and ensure that not a single one is left behind the empowerment of women is not just good for business it benefits whole societies women are powerful agents of change I thank you okay just let's let's realign a bit this is still the the informal chat so let's be informal lolly what you wanted to say you asked me to say something and then get it that everyone is welcome here outside you can you can get your coffee and water some refreshments we will put another two videos that we are missing but very short videos so so then you can please come bring your coffee and then we continue with the second and the third session thank you okay so you are saying that you can get coffees while we project the videos right okay so can we get out from yes that's good so video will be projected and then thank you and then if we carry on thank you it was really nice should I have a discussion yeah we should be more open excellencies business leaders distinguished guests it is a pleasure to join this crucial discussion on supporting women entrepreneurs first my sincere thanks to ITU for hosting and to my colleagues at the women's entrepreneurship accelerator for your commitment to this important issue in the recent decades we've made significant strides towards gender equality including progress in the private sector women's participation has increased in leadership and businesses have proven essential in driving economic and financial performance worldwide however as we all know businesses are facing unprecedented global crises conflicts are raging around the globe countries are struggling to build back from the COVID-19 pandemic while still dealing with new infections climate change is causing loss damage and destruction this array of headwinds including inflation the energy crisis food crisis and conflict are upending the global economic outlook and women are disproportionately impacted by the economic fallout from all of these crises this is simply because women are more likely than men to micro small and medium-sized enterprises mostly in the informal sector they are far more likely to shoulder the burden of unpaid work and they're less likely to have access to assets property and financial services but we all know that despite these challenges women business owners hold great potential for advancing inclusive and sustainable development because when women succeed they invest in their families and their communities they contribute to poverty reduction education and improved nutrition they empower other women and girls and they build more equitable societies the women's entrepreneurship accelerator a partnership between six U.N. agencies is focused on empowering five million women entrepreneurs by 2030 not only does this coalition directly support women entrepreneurs it also focuses on how to better position these women as meaningful participants in global supply chains through gender responsive procurement the UN global compact provides guidance for gender responsive procurement for companies of all sizes through our recently published toolkit applying a gender lens to sustainable procurement advancing gender equality in supply chains is not only the right thing to do it is also a smart business strategy diversifying a company's supply pool contributes to increased revenue increased innovation and adaptability and an overall lowered business risk so dear friends i'd like to personally invite all women business owners and all businesses indeed to adopt gender responsive procurement strategies and ensure that your companies actively drive gender equality across your supply chains we need women's skills women's talent and women's leadership to solve the world's biggest challenges from tackling climate change to rebuilding economies and if we are to achieve a more inclusive and sustainable world we must tap into the full potential of women entrepreneurs thank you distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen it is a real pleasure to address you today on an important topic women's entrepreneurship development economic prosperity and innovation are inextricably linked and deliver major development dividends yet this role remains largely unrecognized it is particularly relevant now as we prepare for the upcoming commission on the status of women which will have innovation as a key theme as we all know gender equality lies at the heart of development and investing in women is one of the smartest and most effective ways for the world to use limited resources we also know that women owned businesses play a crucial role in economic development they generate employment boost innovation provide income for their families and employment for their communities and we also know that almost half of women's entrepreneurs report being driven by the desire to contribute to a greater social good and we see this in how many women do business this is why women's entrepreneurship can actually be a powerful contributor to the achievement of stg-5 however while the number of women operating their own businesses is increasing globally women continue to face significant obstacles in doing so they face legal financial and market barriers that constrain their entrepreneurial success access to capital is in fact one of the most cited barriers to the growth of women entrepreneurship globally and this is not because women entrepreneurs are inherently more risky borrowers than men it is rather because they are constrained by gender based norms and unconscious bias which prevents them from getting as much capital as their male counterparts and because of stereotyped ideas of women's business skills and their role in society to illustrate with just one example we know that venture capital funding for climate related businesses is currently growing five times faster than overall venture capital funding and this shows us that there is a high demand for capital in this area of entrepreneurship yet we know that women led startups in this sector in 2020 for example received just 2.3 percent of bc funding this reflects in part the lack of equality in decision making in venture capital venture capital is a male dominated business 88 percent of decision makers in venture capital firms are men and many venture capital firms lack even a single female partner we also know that women entrepreneurs have to take on burdens that male entrepreneurs do not because of the care burden that falls on women homework schooling domestic responsibilities eldercare responsibilities fall on women much more than they do on their male entrepreneur counterparts this double burden obviously reduces productivity and can also take a toll on women's health and their stress levels so it is crystal clear that we need to change the way we do business so that we are enabling more women entrepreneurs to do more business so I call on all financial institutions and financial service providers to create products and services that fulfill the needs of women owned businesses we need desperately to create a more gender inclusive financial system one that is geared towards the particular needs of women entrepreneurs this also means paying more attention to digital solutions and to have more women in leadership roles and in decision making positions in financial institutions and venture capital funds it is important to drive gender parity not just in those who offer capital but also those who are working on innovation so we must target incubators and accelerators so that they are providing mentoring resources networking opportunities and of course access to capital for women entrepreneurs it is also important to invest in training programs that improve access for women entrepreneurs to invest in inclusive digital payment systems and inclusive infrastructures that allow women to access opportunities we know that the future of education of work of trade and delivery of public services and private services is increasingly digital so we need to provide solutions to women entrepreneurs so that they can build skills capacities and knowledge to effectively manage their businesses and gain access to new markets in an increasingly digital world we all have a collective responsibility and interest to ensure opportunity for all in women and to reshape innovation ecosystems to enable women to participate more fully which is why i'm very pleased to share with you that six united nations the agencies have joined forces through the women's entrepreneurship accelerator to provide solutions and to strengthen business ecosystems for women-led businesses so today i call on all partners to join us and to find ways in which you can contribute to this agenda including your participation at next year's crucial commission on the status of women thank you very much welcome back everyone maybe we can start taking our seats and so we can kick off the next bit of the session hope everyone's well refreshed with some water some tea some coffee some refreshments maybe we give one more minute for colleagues to return back with your beverages for some reason it won't open so if we could all please take our seats so we can kick off this next session hope everyone's feeling a bit refreshed thank you all so much for coming back to the second session of our way of celebration this session will present the way of solutions to advance women entrepreneurship for this we have the pleasure to welcome virgin Rose Lissada from the international labour organization Virginia right here with us and also Anna Marie from the ITC from international trade centre and we also have a video that will play the end from UNGC that's Jocely's video with them we'll hear a bit about gender responsive procurement entrepreneurship development policy recommendations and the exciting entrepreneurship certificate program so to kick off with i'm going to now welcome Virginia to please share with us some of the work of the ILO she's the global coordinator of women's entrepreneurship development at the SME unit there so please over to you Virginia thank you thank you so much I always try and do these things not sure if I can share yes I can all right well good afternoon good morning it's a pleasure to be here I think you've heard some we've heard some really great stuff in the panel right before us right in terms of how do we get innovation in women's entrepreneurship development I'm actually really thrilled to finally get to meet my my colleagues in crime with the women's entrepreneurship accelerator I joined the the partnership about two years ago and so everything has been online and so when the idea of doing something in person came up it was just too good to be true so I'm actually we we only just met Anna Maury and myself physically and it's always interesting to see you know to kind of relate right so anyway so my name is Virginia Rose Lozada and I work for the international labor organization and for those of you who don't know the ILO is the oldest standing UN agency we were created in 1919 after the first world war and with the idea that through work came peace we are the also a tripartite organization meaning that we are represented by governments by workers and employer organizations and why that is important because that is how we promote policies and programs and how we work the ILO has had a program on women's entrepreneurship development since the early 2000s we we worked we were given a mandate by our governing body and we are given the mandate of on three levels on creating the enabling environment for women's entrepreneurship development on building the capacity of our constituents and other service providers to support women's entrepreneurship development and then finally to develop and create tools and approaches that support women's entrepreneurship development now you would have heard in the last video that was that was my director of the department that was my boss talking to you about the ILO's framework conditions for women's entrepreneurship development and so that framework condition we have been fine-tuning over the last 15 years and it's been a collaboration with several UN agencies and also the African Development Bank now the framework conditions what we try to have is a picture of the situation of women's entrepreneurship development in a in a country and that allows us as the ILO to understand the situation but even more importantly our constituents and service providers and so what does the framework conditions look at first of all it looks at the legal and regulatory framework second of all it looks at the effective policy and leadership within women's entrepreneurship development what does that mean that means as we all know in in women's entrepreneurship development you know this falls across so many ministries right we talk about the ministry of industry of economy women's affairs and it depends on in the country who is the lead that it's actually how we approach a lot women's entrepreneurship development so we try and we look and see at the country level what is that exactly what is that coordination and then we look at things that are very dear to our hearts and I think many of us work on which is that access to gender sensitive financial services and the non-financial or the business development services so what is the kind of trainings and the kind of supports that are given to women's entrepreneurship and then we look at the access to markets and technology and this is here where today's session you know makes a lot of sense and we hear we look at how women are accessing the use of technology but also what kind of use of technology they're making and what we see often also is how the service providers themselves make use of technology and what we've been finding for example in recent research we've been carrying out is that very very rarely if to say never do these service providers actually think of what are the technologies that the women themselves are using to adapt their technologies when they go digital so there you see that there's another gap in terms of how we're reaching out to women entrepreneurs and the last one is something that is very dear to the ILO's heart as I said we are a tripartite organization where social dialogue is really are in our blood and so looking at the representation of women entrepreneurs and their participation in policy dialogue is key aspect to support women's entrepreneurship development how do we do that and I'm just going to very quickly say what we what and this is something that is also very dear to our hearts is that we conduct desk research as usual we will do key informant interviews with key stakeholders but then we will also and that was something that grew with us as time went by hearing directly from the women we can have we can paint a beautiful picture but then how is it being lived and experienced by the women entrepreneurs was key to us and so we took that on to make those assessments now very quickly I'm not going to go into much detail but those those assessments we do we do something that is very visual why do we do something very visual because it's a way of igniting change right when you see something and I'll show you what we mean by very visual those kinds of diagrams and you can kind of see where in what sectors and what conditions and subconditions our countries maybe not let you know developed enough or they haven't done enough or there are still things to improve on and then from there that really triggers a discussion around what can we do in terms of changes and here it's besides how we do we undertake the studies it's that we make sure that in our wet assessments we have a working group that follows that and that working group is is is comprised of members of our constituents so members of government of the employers of women entrepreneurs associations of service providers of academia and they're the ones who are going to make sure that what we are finding makes sense but then also they are ultimately responsible right for making any possible action plans that can be delivered and so that is what we do within the aisle in terms of women's entrepreneurship development at that level now within the women's entrepreneurship accelerator partnership that brings us here today what we've been doing have been two things first of all we've been developing more research so undertaking a wet assessment in a specific country and that was Mexico and what we wanted to do in Mexico was try to see how we could adapt this methodology within specific sectors and there we went into the sectors of industry and commerce and it was also the first time we were doing a wet assessment in times of covid so it was the first time that we were able to get some indication of what was the impact of covid during that time for the women entrepreneurs and that was the first area right so it was gathering that information but then we also did work in Brazil and that was at another at a different level that was once you have a wet assessment or once you have information you understand the situation what can we do with partners to trigger change and I think Pamela was saying something along those lines right so you can have it but how do you how do you make change and there we were testing different possibilities of getting that momentum within within a state it was actually done wet assessment within Mato Grosso and it was to see how we could mobilize the actors in the ecosystem and so there we were testing things like doing capacity building we were doing national campaigns to change perspectives around women entrepreneurs but it was also in terms of getting the employer organizations to take on the role of women entrepreneurship development being there at the forefront and the Brazilian the Brazilian work that we did also brought we were able to kind of move it up to the regional level by that we mean we brought in employer organizations and women entrepreneurs associations from other countries in in Latin America namely Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay and they shared their results on the wet assessments and their their paths to improving their the conditions for women's entrepreneurship development and so by favorite by by pushing that agenda at an at a regional level we're also adding additional let me let me say pressure points to support that change at the policy level in women's entrepreneurship development so that has been the work that we've been doing in the last year with with the support of women's entrepreneurship the women's entrepreneurship accelerator now what we want to do moving forward what we want to do is to continue building on these achievements we wish to further deepen and expand the research and the policy agenda in women's entrepreneurship development we'd be for example thrilled to collaborate as ITU with a new member in terms of that angle of digitalization we have a little bit in those wet assessments but how can we deepen that knowledge at the other side an element that is dear to the ILO's heart currently is actually maternity protection and and and access to care and so here we're trying to explore how we can more systematically include maternity protection access to child care services we this has been something that we've been looking at and women entrepreneurs themselves see that the motherhood employment penalty is really there is really impacting their ability to start and grow sustainable businesses and even decide when they want to have children and and how many in many countries this is compounded by the fact that women entrepreneurs are excluded from child care related policies and or struggle to access affordable and quality child care services so that is an area that we want to push forward in the moving years um in addition we want to look at at the at the sectors of of value chain development we see how usually there are more and more organizations working on value chain development but how do we ensure a gender inclusive service for value chain development so those are just a few areas that we hope to collaborate further with um and with that I I really look forward to the years to come within the women's entrepreneurship accelerator I also want to remind ourselves that we are within the 16 days of activism to fight against gender-based violence and this year it's really about that collective voice those that push for women's organizations right and I just wanted to also remind that women's entrepreneurship accelerator again women's entrepreneurship organizations have a big role to play in there and that is an area that we also promote and that we support and with this I thank you so much for your attention and I'm happy to take any questions and look forward to talking to you more thank you so much thank you so much Virginia it's really incredible to hear about all these achievements that happened in such a short space of time and and of course it's very exciting to see a bit about where we could even go further now I'm going to hand over to Anna Marie the partnerships and program manager of sheet trades at the ITC on the certificate program of entrepreneurship Anna you have the floor thank you thank you uh well online good morning uh good evening good afternoon good evening everyone I I do hope you still have a bit of stamina and energy and attention to follow me here after so many videos after so many presentations I think the the discussions were great but please I don't want to I don't want to take much time between you and the cocktail and the innovation launch so that will be fast but bear with me bear with me uh I come from the international trade center and my boss was speaking here right before and I think gatherings like this they really motivate us to think in more inspirational and impactful way so I was just going down you know the the floors with her and we're just thinking about why not thinking about this spaghetti bolognese initiative where basically we bring all these different um UN agencies uh around the table with ministers with gender ministers to talk about health led by WHO about trade led by ITC about digital skills led by ITU and so on and so forth so I think these are the moments where we we need to be the discussing and I think you guys can also you know speak amongst yourselves as well and please come talk to me later if you if you have any questions so I come from the ITC we are 50% United Nations we are 50% World Trade Organization what we try to do we try to help small businesses increase their competitiveness and then we connect them to markets international markets and we work at different levels we work with policymakers we help them understand how to mainstream gender at the their national policies but also at the regional level we help women's business associations to have a voice to you know provide policy recommendations to the FCFTA regulators and policymakers right now and we also work at the WTO by you know animating those discussions around trade and gender but we also work with the ecosystem on the ground what we call chambers of commerce business support organizations women's business associations because they have amazing products and services I think my executive director was saying that we need to work with organizations on the ground that know the reality on the ground but what we do at ITC we help them understand the needs of women led businesses of women entrepreneurs they need to have tailored services and products for women entrepreneurs and then of course we also work directly with the women led businesses women entrepreneurs women led cooperatives and this is the bread and butter of what ITC does capacity building on packaging standards quality if if they're in the coffee sector we help them understand how to calculate their production cost and so on so this is what we do and on the other side of the coin we also work with market players we I'm talking about the likes of Google I'm talking about the likes of Olam Nestle so they understand the importance of sourcing from women entrepreneurs so this is basically what we do next colleagues okay and I was talking about policy and I don't know if there are some representatives of missions here I don't know your backgrounds but policy is very important you know and and under the systematic change that I think our colleague from UNDP Adji was saying right so we launched this this tool which is quite well known called she trades outlook and the idea here is to provide a lens a landscape on how a country is doing in terms of supporting women to trade so we analyze fresh data so 80 percent of the data that is available on this tool on she trades outlook you can google is new so you'll not find anywhere else so we we have analyzed the data across six different dimensions so we analyze how a country is doing in terms of trade policy and how we're supporting women on the trade policy how is the business environment for women to trade the third dimension is how is the legal and regulatory framework are there barriers for women to trade that are literally written on the law number four are there any programs that are supporting women to have better skills to trade number five the government is actually creating programs on access to finance and number six how is working society so I really invited to check that out next please okay and then as you might know on the we are you an agency right so we do have these big projects sector specific in it takes 1000 garments and so on in different countries in Sierra Leone going to Kenya or in Vietnam and so on but what we realize is that we as as ITC UN we have a lot of support in working in least developed countries or developing countries that are priority for the United Nations but the world is much bigger than that as well right so we have created what we call our gender hubs our she trades hubs and these are basically countries that come to us and say look Anna we want to localize what she trades what your gender unit is doing at the country level so we have launched 12 different hubs and these are the countries that you can see on the screen so if you come from any of these geographies we have teams on the ground these are led by ministries of trade or by chambers of commerce basically getting our methodology in terms of training building the competitiveness of women entrepreneurs and then linking them to market opportunities and so on e-commerce etc and you can get to know more or even invite your networks of SMEs to to be part of this so this is it was the way that we found to to make sure that our work is really global and we do not fund these funds these are these hubs these are self-funded institutions localized we just provide the methodology and and the the know-how yeah next and as we are speaking and we are here at the ITU so I must talk about digital right but now but we know that of course as as Pamela said you know the the the SMEs that were online they had much higher chances to survive than the ones that are just trading offline and and we know this for for many many years so we launched she trades.com is our one stop shop platform what we do we get we help women entrepreneurs to have a place to make make their businesses visible to the market right e-commerce is very good but some small businesses are self-employed women they don't have the skills to run a website sometimes they don't understand even how to do they cannot pay someone to do that so this is a place where women entrepreneurs can really make their business visible we they can post pictures they can tell in which sectors they are what are their production capacity which certification they have and so on and then buyers that hopefully know about importance of supply diversity for example they can go there and they try to they can try to find potential women suppliers to diversify their supply supplier databases and under this same platform and again oh I forgot to mention this is a United Nations public good so it's free of charge right and under this same platform we have our virtual learning academy and we literally got our more than 15 years of knowledge working with SMEs and we have 100 courses right now it could be oh you can take them on on desktop or on your phones because we realize that women entrepreneurs they are busy trying to survive right so they don't have sometimes two weeks one month to be able to take in a course on Coursera for example so you may find those courses online there on global value chains design a strategy for success but there are different versions of gamifying courses that are adapted to the realities of entrepreneurs so there's some that you can take you can take on the phone before going to bed is a two hour course and at the end you know you really get understanding on a specific topic so and these learning academy is backed up by a community so if you're a student you can be asking you know other peers what they're learning what they're not learning and there's a tutor at least here is the tutor from one of our access to finance courses and you can ask questions at any time so I think it's a good way to have this one-on-one relationship with our experts next yeah so I just want to before getting to the the way our conversation we also help bridge the financial gender gap that we are talking a lot and then now we might be asking me why you know ITC which is a trade related agency is caring about finance it's just because we ask businesses led by by men what what what is the what is the what is the top one barrier for for meant to trade they said access to markets we don't know where the buyers are and then we ask women led businesses and they they say that the top one barrier is always the same during the past 10 years access to finance so organically we grew this network of financiers that want to do gender lens investing that want to support women entrepreneurs so we are just bridging the gap we have a network of hundreds of thousands of women entrepreneurs we know their financial needs and we know the requirements of capital providers so if you go to the next slide because I just received a note that I need to rush you can get to know more and scan our QR code because this is where basically we are matchmaking we are really supporting and disbursing loans with the help of financiers to the hands of women entrepreneurs we are talking about five million dollars per year in the hands of women entrepreneurs next please I think I'll skip that one and what we can we can continue and as Pamela was saying now what we are doing we're scaling we're scaling up our game so now we'll be also working with young women with small scale traders with workers and that's why the partnership with waya makes sense for us under this past one year and a half we have developed seven entrepreneurship certificate programs that are available on shetrades.com we have spent quite a bit of time recording 200 videos and these trainings they are amazing I must say it's one of our top notch really if you want to open a business or if you want to improve what we are what you are doing it has seven different steps from deciding whether the entrepreneurship is the right way for you because sometimes we believe it is but we just do not have the personality for that to the ideation of the business to you know how to fundraise for it so I really encourage you to have a look at this and at the end you get an official United Nations certificate signed by our executive director this is available in English, French and Spanish and you know I can give you the link later next please we also spend quite a bit of time last year doing workshops on key aspects of trade e-commerce, competitiveness and market access in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and India and we continue doing that if you come from you know these countries please let's talk after the after the meeting next and what we are planning to do so the entrepreneurship certificate program will be available in Arabic in Mandarin and in Portuguese as well and of course together with UN Global Compact we want to increase gender responsive procurement maybe let's move to the next slide already and sorry for you know stepping and going so fast but I understand that the the team needs to wrap up why this is so important for us you know there are many companies big companies that they are very proud of saying that they have strong supply diversity commitments and programs I must tell you that just like some policies are not being operational with some countries from the government side the same happens on the private sector side so right now we are running a pilot in Indonesia with Unilever they just came to us and listen we have approximately 300 million dollars to spend in products and stuff to procure in products and services from women led businesses we don't know where these women are the ones that are that we believe that could be our suppliers sometimes they don't match certification in standards criteria can you please help right so this is what we are doing in in Indonesia right now we have a pipeline we're generating this pipeline of women led businesses to become potential suppliers for Unilever and we aim to do this and we are already doing with other companies as well this was one one example but we want to bring this to WEA and to the signatories of the UN global compact next and with my last slide I just mentioned that but that we have under ITC she trades invest we are matchmaking capital providers with women led businesses we aim to also bring this to the to all the beneficiaries on the WEA under UN agencies we have the methodology we have the network of capital providers we can scale that up under this partnership with that I thank you so so much and over to you no thank you so much I know the thank you so much the work that you shared especially on the entrepreneurship certificate program sounds extremely interesting I can't wait to share it with the amazing young entrepreneurs that we have in our generation connect program here at the ITU I think next we have online joining us live Joyce Lee from the UN global compacts to share with us Joyce Lee are you here with us if so the floor is yours I am thank you so much and and good morning good afternoon and evening to everyone online and in person I'm happy to be here today my name is Jocelyn Chu and I work at UN Women I'm happy to be here today to celebrate WEA's third anniversary so first I'll start off by just thanking Mary Kay for their support of WEA we've been able to do great work together thus far and we are very much looking forward to our continued successful cooperation along with our partners whom you've heard speak today UNDP, ILO, ITC, ITU and UNGC so on that note and I know we are running a bit behind and you've been listening to speakers for a while now I'll just be really quick today and highlight the work that UN Women has done on gender responsive procurement and this is something that my colleague Annamori touched upon as well so gender responsive procurement is a key strategy that really takes a holistic and systems approach to advance women's economic empowerment so for those unfamiliar with the term it means sourcing from women-owned and women-led enterprises as well as gender responsive businesses so in other words gender responsive procurement leverages the buying power of governments companies and other organizations for gender equality and this is important because globally about one and three businesses are owned by women but women only win an estimated one percent of the procurement spend of large corporations now recognizing this huge potential in procurement we created a few products to promote gender responsive procurement in contribution to WEA so first UN Women created an advocacy tool that highlights the business case for gender responsive procurement and it's called procurement strategic value why gender responsive procurement makes business sense and I'll be happy to share the link to this after my remarks now as part of this research we engaged over 350 stakeholders with a focus on the private sector and we distilled six key benefits of gender responsive procurement and I won't go into that now because that will be featured in a video shortly the publication also features case studies on what companies are doing and what they're seeing as a result of more inclusive procurement practices and so to to pique your interest a little bit today and to highlight the report I'll just give an example now of a Gulf African Gulf African bank and they found that before taking on GRP their women banking segment wasn't profitable but actually after increasing spend in procurement with women owned businesses the segment now contributes to about 25 percent of its assets and liabilities so through this example we see that gender responsive procurement could actually boost and increase revenue I'll just quickly highlight another case study as well that from Bristol Myers Squibb during the pandemic they made a mad scramble for PPE just like everyone else in the world you know at the start of 2020 and in there in the end it was actually their efforts in supplier diversity that allowed them to find the PPE necessary so the personal protective equipment necessary to continue their operations in the first half of that year now a second product on gender responsive procurement I'll highlight today is a toolkit by the UN Global Compact in collaboration with us here at Yield Women called Applying a Gender Lens to Sustainable Procurement and this toolkit is based on the report procurement strategic value that I just highlighted the toolkit is a new practical guide on how to support the private sector in advancing gender equality and promoting non-discrimination through their procurement decisions and we'd be happy to share that link with you as well later and then a final product that I'd like to share with you all today is by UNGC Global Compact again in collaboration with Yield Women and WEA and it's a video I'm highlighting gender responsive procurement and we're delighted to share that with you today so thank you everyone for your attention and now over to the video gender responsive procurement gender responsive procurement or GRP means sourcing from women owned businesses as well as from gender responsive businesses and not just in the name of increased gender equality but in the name of good business too UN women's report procurement strategic value why gender responsive procurement makes business sense shows revenues increase as procurement spend is lowered brand reputation can be enhanced at the same time as increasing innovation and adaptability lowering risk and improving service delivery finally GRP can advance economic development and inclusive growth for all sustainable development goal five calls for all stakeholders including business to work collectively to remove barriers to women's empowerment and achieve gender equality by 2030 so if you're in charge of procurement you could ask these simple questions are my suppliers committed to gender equality have they signed the women's empowerment principles founded by the UN Global Compact and UN women do they have policies and practices in place to address sexual harassment and gender-based violence do women workers face pregnancy and or maternity discrimination is there a gender pay gap and are the specific health and safety concerns of women workers addressed to learn more about adopting gender responsive procurement practices visit UN Global Compact.org forward slash gender thank you so much to Joyce Lynn for that video and I really apologize for having to cut the time sure I'm sure we all would love to hear more and that's why I highly encourage everyone when we get to go out to the cocktail soon please let's continue these conversations I think it's impossible to condense all the amazing work that we're doing on women entrepreneurship into what 10 minutes so please let's keep the conversation going during the cocktail and even beyond so that we can continue to you know collaborate and not work in silos as was said by by an earlier speaker so now is our third and final session for today and it's an exciting announcement from us at the ITU to the WEA community and we hope you will all help us promote this exciting challenge in the next few few weeks so for this I'm going to invite my wonderful colleague Victoria Masso from the digital innovation ecosystem team so come over Victoria yes why not absolutely and we'll hand over to you and again thank you so much Virginia thank you so much Anna and Joyce Lynn online yes hello oh hi everyone and welcome thank you so much for having me I have some good news and some bad news do you want to hear the bad news first I'm the only one in between the only person between you and the cocktails that's a bad news the good news is that we're as as they were said we're going to be launching today our see if we have this lights up yep so I'm I'm very excited to announce that today we're launching our women entrepreneurship accelerator digital innovation challenge which you will see at some point on the screen okay so I'll just start I'll just start talking a little bit about it this challenge is in collaboration with the women entrepreneurship accelerator and the organizations as well as with mary k and ITU work with ITU and so you know a little bit about what a digital innovation challenge is is basically a platform where we have stakeholders from an ecosystem to be able to to be able to present their ideas their research their projects and then we empower them for them to transform the communities into thriving digital societies unfortunately you cannot see the pictures but we had really nice pictures that you can go online we have done since 2016 about over 20 challenges and we have impacted around 300 over 300 participants and this is a project that is very dear to me because I have seen the change as well as my team of those participants and in their communities thank you fine if we put it just like that yeah all right great so if you go to the next slide down down down there okay the objective of this challenge specifically is to build private and inclusive digital innovation ecosystems that empower women entrepreneurs that's why we're here today and so we are supporting digital innovations from women owned companies initiatives that have at least one female founder and then that as well they're working towards achieving the sustainable development goals next one I'm not going to go into a lot of detail in this part because we already talked about this throughout today and it was very very well presented but as you know entrepreneurship is a male dominated industry and women depending on where you are they still face legal financial and marketing inequalities this has been covered very very thoroughly but also it has been covered very thoroughly that women entrepreneurs do contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction worldwide and we need women to be in the on the table discussing when technologies are being created when innovation digital innovations are being created so for us and this challenge it is crucial for us to maximize that the impact that women entrepreneurs should have and be able to foster those digital ecosystems are equal that are gender equal so what happens what happens with this the winners of the challenge get to have an award and this award doesn't happen by chance the award is meant to be able to help those initiatives those organizations to develop their proposals their projects and we provide them with capacity building training in the form of a bootcamp they also have access to a mentorship scheme and access to a network of change makers where other previous winners are as well as policy makers private sector various different change makers and also they will be published in a best practice report and they will have the possibility to attend to the 67th session of the commission on the status of women and like I said this award is not by chance we focus on being able to help those initiatives to be sustainable as we said various times innovation is a systems issue and so what we do is that we give them we train them and we give them a set of tools to be able to deal with the uncertainty that come from balancing that balancing acts that come from assessing is this the right opportunity is my ecosystem supporting me do I have a thriving ecosystem do I have the right resources and do I have the right team and be able to be able to manage those three things allows them to have a sustainable initiative and that's the way that we support them throughout the challenge you go to the next one practically how does this look like well today the website is up so please do share it with your network your teams and invite women or organizations and projects that at least have one female founder in the leadership team to apply and then the applications are going to be closing on the 20th of January and so there will be a pitch there will be a pre-selection of initiatives that will go then to a pitch competition and we will select the winners these winners then are going to go through a capacity building bootcamp which is where we give them the tools that will allow them to assess their initiative and be able to think about it differently because that's what we need to to do we need to think differently to do things differently and then they'll be supported afterwards with a mentorship program they'll be matched with a mentor that will support them to achieve their goals to later then go to having a best practice report published and afterwards they graduate and become part of the alumni all of this is supported all of this body supported by what we call the digital innovation ecosystem network which is they become part of it and in there like I mentioned they find various change makers and they have been great connections that have been gone done got happened through that and I want to to make it a bit more more tangible show you a video of a few for female previous winners female funders talking a little bit it's very very short about their experience co-founder of origine learning fund our project was a lab app the education from Colombia to Nigeria and we won the ITU digital challenge in 2022 our experience was amazing we were able to partner up with three local based organizations across the country impacting more than 1000 young students um so I would suggest to all female founders out there to apply to this program I know that we have to face many different types of challenges to actually access to a bigger market so with this you will have support and training so that you are able to actually access to a bigger market and increase your impact so best of luck hi I am Achyannila founder managing director women and digital in 2020 I have owned the ITU digital innovation challenge and my category was women in technology and my project was empowering women in tech and make them financial empower through mobile data and the internet we learned a lot of things from this competition because we was going through a mentoring process and I believe the women those who want to prove themselves are validated they are projects they should apply this competition because it's a learning and sharing and networking competition so you can learn lots of things and you can gain international access where you can extort your projects and other projects also so please do apply thank you hello everyone my name is Nilima Dhingra I work for DiMagi out of India we are one of the fortunate winners of global south COVID-19 digital innovation challenge launched by ITU in June 2021 I must admit that the mentorship and guidance provided by ITU during the program really helped us in framing the guru market strategy for our nutrition solution we are now able to implement a pilot project of DiMagi nutrition solution in ivory coast and soon we'll be able to impact many lives and improve the nutrition indicators of children I was able to connect with the like-minded people during global south south development export 2022 in Thailand and learn best practices from many organizations I would want to thank ITU for this opportunity and motivate you all women to come forward and participate in the upcoming challenge and get that learning experience thanks for listening and looking forward to seeing you soon in the upcoming challenge great um and these are just a few um we've seen them expand grow pavements and the success stories are just incredible so I highly recommend you to share it and apply and help us build ecosystems that are more gender inclusive and now we go back quickly to the slides yeah I'll give my colleague Jacqueline uh the floor all right okay uh hello everyone so my name is Jacqueline Mkarkund um generation connective framework I'm here for ITU study group but also I'm a young entrepreneur I'm 24 years old I have a startup called Westerzone we are into urban mining specifically focusing on electronic waste we have in our house everywhere where we are um yes uh I was yes as you can see our mission is to provide customers manufacturers and suckers with amazing trace traceability services by helping them to generate a value addition to this electronic waste we have in our offices and all over in our homes so our vision is to from trash to cash to give value to these electronic waste but also to create waste for the world since we are facing climate change currently um next I was um I was being um talk about uh the women in business specifically how why they need support and um one thing comes in my mind I remember a story of my mom so my parents separated when I was one year old and one of the story my mom told it was that the life was so hard to the point that uh she was um street vendor she was selling mangoes and avocados on the street she would carry us me with one year old baby and my brother who was five year old or in the street to be able to find the food of the day and that's really struck to me how women are really um are really heroes right because one of her aim is to see us growing up and become who we are right now and I do really appreciate that so if we are talking about women entrepreneurs sometimes you forget that most of women are actually doing smaller businesses they're not able to have this big companies we see all over the world by Microsoft or this like this popular popping companies they are running smaller business and that's why you find that the statistics says that our female entrepreneurs make up to 43 percent of more global entrepreneurs the percentage is very high but are they in Roger company business no they're still as a smaller business they are not able to grow why because of so many different challenges and when you see in sub Saharan Africa 89 according to weforum I have um statistics I got from weforum and you and women it says that in sub Saharan Africa 89 percent of women are in informal sectors between 80 million to 10 million they have smaller and medium-sized enterprises and also one of the challenge they hardly face as informal sectors businesses they lucky finances they are they lead the rigour inequalities because once you're going to ask a bank for our own show us the property and most of the property are in the name of the husband and once they are separated there is chaos and so many things happening that's makes them not being able to have access to finance and there is also instruction with owning and managing properties as you know from our car richer specifically let me speak in behalf of Africa the culture our culture is different you have to be you know the husband is above and we accept that but that brings also challenge for women to grow as entrepreneurs that's where they stay on the smaller stage and um let's also talk the reality of women you are expected to settle down especially we as a young women who are learning business you're expected to be settled on specific age mostly 30 years old they are starting to be stressed oh my god now I'm going to have to have a family have to learn business I have to do this so I have to make one stop so that I can really focus on family so that the the proportional share of housework and child care responsibility also affect women entrepreneurs um so we've talked about special age due to social norms on women specifically when you are supposed to settle down sit down and have a family it's a big issue with women entrepreneurs I was having a conversation with my mentor I have back home in Rwanda she's really doing very good with her organizations she provides um consultation to companies she has four kids she's really had good education but up to now she was talking to me how she was facing mental health issues due to they were asking her when are you going to have a five kid and she was like I already have four kids and I'm trying to manage my business so how am I going to handle this so the judgment into family members into society into this it's become a lot and something we're discussing so I was trying to recent to her as someone who's 24 years old I was like imagine people who face this and you're from a family with mindset different so you can end up really learning a way because it's too much for you so all of these issues it's something women go through in each and every their everyday life and that's why supporting women entrepreneurs it's neat to be understandable but also I appreciate what she trade I actually attended one of she trades sessions I think last year for a few weeks and it was very amazing I appreciate how they support these women on the street who are just working to get 1000 France to buy food for the kids so all of this it's must be considered how to take these women from lower level to upper level we should also consider about especially with women support how can you make sure that you suppose these women maybe they don't have I see it in knowledge to write application on website maybe they don't even know how to write but one of interesting thing is that women are very heroes because they may not know how to write how to send an email but they're very wise on how to write down the money they gained but they the profit they live in you how I'm going to go back to the market to buy new things as my stock they already have a knowledge but how do we take it to the next level and I think that's where it is coming from so I appreciate that very quick as I'm concluding I'd like to talk about next slide we our company is very small it's a startup company but we have initiated how young women can be able to be taken to another level so currently we have resourceful fellowship where we're working with youth to the front end it's a US man-based organization which is supporting us in terms of having an employee but helping us to to also support ladies in a green tech because what we do if we are into green tech technology so all of these women are graduated from a random coding academy they're into engineering software computer science and they are working with us on the projects we have to be able to take it to the next level so involving many women and having an experience for the next level it's what we are aiming and I hope we as a young people we have this chance but also our mothers who are still in the big business they also have a chance to grow to where they are yes thank you thank you so much and no congratulations on the launch of this exciting digital innovation challenge as someone from Nigeria a lot of what you said about the social norms definitely hit close to home and I'll be encouraging you know other amazing young women like Jacqueline in our generation connect community to apply to this and I hope you all will be reaching out to women in your networks and to share this and to ask them to continue to share so as many women across the world can benefit from such incredible platforms and innovation challenges so we're coming to an end of the celebration unless you definitely would not want me to do this but I really want to congratulate Lola Lee for organising the physical meeting here but of course all our partners here everyone who has spoken virtually physically those who sent videos it's really made this an incredible event today we hope all of you can join us next door for the cocktail reception which is thanks to the kind support of our sponsor Yildiz Holding AS and in the spirit of collaboration and inspiration I think we should all give ourselves a wonderful round of applause for getting to this point all right cocktail time let's take care everyone and we can continue the conversation next door