Women economic empowerment and gender parity are at the core of Egypt’s sustainable development framework, addressing structural and social reforms to pave the way for an inclusive and safe future. Minister of International Cooperation, H.E. Dr. Rania A. Al-Mashat announced today that the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) “Global Gender Gap Report 2021” highlighted that Egypt has closed 63.9% of its overall gender gap, jumping 5 rankings ahead in this year’s gender gap index. Egypt is listed among the 96 countries that also reduced gender gaps in parliament; increasing the female representation from 14.9% to 27.4%. In the past 6 years, Egypt has witnessed notable positive progress on the women empowerment and gender equality agenda. Today, 25% of Egypt’s Parliament seats are allocated to women, with 8 crucial ministries led by women in the cabinet. The report also stated that “Egypt closed 19.6% of its political empowerment gap to date and counts 27% of women among parliamentarians and 24.2% among ministers.” The report adds that there is progress in terms of “Health and Survival” with 96.8% and in “Educational Attainment” with 97% of the gender gap closed. Earlier this year, the Ministry of International Cooperation pushed towards women’s economic empowerment with the National Council for Women, the WEF and the private sector by launching a 10-pillar action plan for the “Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator”. The action plan emphasizes Egypt’s continued commitment to applying policies that push the gender agenda forward. The plan’s 10 pillars include several tasks and sub-actions for all stakeholders to implement, bringing their own expertise to the gender parity framework. The pillars cover a wide array of fields where development is necessary to ensure women’s inclusion, such as: empowering work regulations, leadership mentorship and protocols, educational reskilling and preparation, digitalization of businesses, and social inclusion measures and policies. The Ministry of International Cooperation 2020 Annual Report titled “International Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Writing the Future in a Changing Global Dynamic” cites that 34 projects, worth $3.3 billion, are being executed to achieve the targets of gender equality, with the top targeted sectors to be Health (20%), Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) (15%), and Education (14%). Egypt was also the first country to provide a women-specific response during the COVID-19 pandemic, launched by the NCW. The country scored 1st place in the Middle East and West Asia regions with 21 policy measures according to the UNDP COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker. In 2017, the “National Strategy for the Empowerment of Egyptian women 2030” was adopted by the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and to ensure a rigorous monitoring framework for the strategy, the National Council for Women (NCW) established Egypt National Observatory for Women (ENOW) that follows up on the strategy’s implementation. The following year, Al-Sisi announced 2018 as the “Year of Egyptian women”, describing expediting steps towards the empowerment of women, in addition to safeguarding their constitutional rights as a “national duty”. Link to the “Global Gender Gap Report 2021”: https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2021/in-full