16 June 2014: The International Trade Centre (ITC) and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) organized the first of two training seminars for partners in the region, aiming to mainstream gender in the trade and development agenda.
Approximately 50 trade officials from the Caribbean region attended the seminar in Bridgetown, Barbados, from 16-19 June 2014, on the theme of ‘Gender Mainstreaming in Caribbean Trade Policies and Programmes: Promoting Gender Equality for Improved Trade and Development.’ The seminar aimed to develop a joint position paper on the integration of a gender perspective in regional and national trade policies.
The ITC website notes a correlation between increased international trade and a rise in women’s employment. The organization supports ‘targeted procurement,’ whereby governments are encouraged to award a fair share of available contracts for the procurement of goods and services to women entrepreneurs.
The ITC is a joint agency of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the UN, which provides financial and technical assistance to trade support institutions (TSIs), such as ministries of trade and finance, and chambers of commerce, with a view to helping small and medium enterprises in developing countries become more competitive in global markets. The ITC manages a Women and Trade Programme, funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfID).
The CDB aims to bring development resources into the Caribbean region. It works with member states to reduce poverty and promote development.
The ITC’s Women and Trade Programme aims to: increase the demand for goods and services supplied by women entrepreneurs, build women entrepreneurs’ capacity in partnership with TSIs, build the capacity of TSIs to better service women clients, raise policy makers’ awareness of barriers women entrepreneurs face in participating in international trade and implement its own gender mainstreaming policy in the context of its development work. [ITC Press Release] [ITC Women and Trade Programme Web Page] [CDB Press Release] [CDB Website]