UN Women-IORA Webinar: Gender-Responsive Procurement: Increasing Women’s Inclusion in Supply Chains

This webinar provided an introduction to gender-responsive procurement (GRP), as well as shared some good practices and different approaches to gender-responsive procurement.

As part of the Australian Government funded project on Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Indian Ocean Rim, and in collaboration with the IORA Secretariat, UN Women is producing a series of webinars on the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs). The WEPs are a set of seven principles that offer guidance to businesses on how to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community.

This webinar focused on aspects of Principle 5, specifically, gender-responsive procurement. Gender-responsive procurement (GRP) refers to the sustainable selection of services, goods or civil works that takes into consideration the impact on gender equality and women’s empowerment. This is a particularly important strategy for supporting women-led businesses and women entrepreneurs amid COVID-19. In addition to an introduction of key concepts and the potential contributions to gender equality, the webinar highlighted some good practices and different approaches to gender-responsive procurement by WEPs signatories in the Indian Ocean Rim region.

The webinar was led by UN Women trainer Lucy Ferguson who recently developed and delivered a training on GRP for IORA Member States. Lucy was joined by guest speakers Dave Andrews, Procurement Lead, Microsoft Australia and New Zealand, and Salonie Muralidhara Hiriyur, Senior Coordinator at SEWA Cooperative Federation of India.