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Dr. Al Mashat joins EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabari and more than 200 attendees in the “EBRD - Women 20 Gender and Crisis Recovery: Building Back Better” Virtual Webinar.

“An inclusive workforce is directly correlated in both public and private sectors with significant gains in productivity, effectiveness and efficiency, leading to sustainable economic growth”. Dr. Rania Al Mashat

H.E. Dr. Rania Al Mashat, Minister of International Cooperation joins EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabari and EBRD Managing Director for Policy and Governance, Dr. Mattia Romani to explore key gender-inclusive policy recommendations relevant to policy makers and the private sector, to ensure that future recovery measures are gender responsive in the “EBRD - Women20 Gender and Crisis Recovery: Building Back Better” virtual panel discussion. Dr. Al Mashat stressed that the participation of women is macro critical, with economies of the future benefiting from the full participation of women in economic activity. As the world recovers from the pandemic, there is a unique opportunity to further promote the role of women. Both public and private economic recovery efforts must account for the impact on women as workers, business owners, entrepreneurs and caregivers. Effective gender-inclusive policies, ranging from accessing financial rescue packages, credit and unemployment benefits to removing barriers for women to perform higher-skilled and better-paid jobs, can help unlock the full potential for women’s equal participation in the economy. The webinar showcased crisis recovery policies embraced today, and recommendations for years to come in support of business resilience and sustainability through public - private partnerships. It has also explored emerging evidence around gender-differentiated market transition and economic impact of the crisis, and how it can be used to to feed into the Women20’s development of a gender responsive global and regional crisis recovery roadmap. As one of the last events for EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabari; before stepping down as President, he discussed the importance of adopting Gender-Inclusive strategies in all operations and its transition from the social realm alone to the economic realm. EBRD aims to in increase gender equality and equality of opportunities in the countries where the EBRD invests, as an important contributor to well-functioning market economies and inclusive societies – a core component of sustainable and equitable transition. Minister Al Mashat thanked him for his leadership at EBRD and support to Egypt during his tenure. Egypt, was highlighted in the discussion as an exemplar case, since it was the first country to issue a policy paper outlining “Egypt’s Rapid Response to Women’s Situation during the COVID-19 Outbreak” and initiated the bimonthly Gender Policy Tracker, to track the Government of Egypt’s response to the crisis through a gender lens. “Together with the National Council for Women; we are ensuring that development financing initiatives have a gender-inclusive element to accelerate progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality. The Ministry of International Cooperation with its multilateral and bilateral parters are collaborating closely to push forward the gender agenda, a national priority, to showcase actual results on ground across women economic empowerment, labor inclusion, social protection and sectoral support”. Dr. Al Mashat said. Egypt has recently been awarded by EBRD in its 2020 Annual Sustainability Awards for its commitment to Environment and Social Sustainability on Gender and Inclusion. The webinar included panelists Dr. Thoraya Obaid - Chair of G20 Engagement Group, Women 20, Madina Abylkasymova, Governor of the Kazakh Agency for Regulation and Development of Financial Market, Anila Denaj, Minister of Economy & Finance of Albania and Salma Eagid, Executive Director, Women 20.