Following on the mandate of the ILO Centenary Declaration to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work, EMPLAB works on the development of a new generation of gender-responsive National Employment Policies (NEPs). Gender equality is a central feature of NEPs to ensure that women and men benefit equally from structural economic shifts as well as technological upgrading within sectors.

EMPLAB ensures that the strategies, programmes and policies it promotes, and their implementation at the national, regional and global levels, are gender-responsive. Policies are gender responsive when they pursue gender-equality objectives, based on diagnoses of how different policy options affect women and men.

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, EMPLAB is working on improving the diagnostics of the gender impacts of the crisis, providing tools to analyze these impacts at the country level and supporting the efforts of member States and social partners to ensure the conditions for a prompt, gender-responsive and job-rich recovery.

Services and products 

EMPLAB develops tools, guidelines and training curricula on gender and employment policies, and diagnostics and methodologies to evaluate the gender impacts on policies and programmes. It also provides support to advocacy, technical advisory and capacity building work for the adoption of gender-responsive employment policy frameworks, build relevant partnerships and programmes, and mobilize resources towards this objective. Examples include:

Blog: Put gender equality at the heart of the post-COVID-19 economic recovery 

Podcast: Bringing gender equality to the core of employment recovery 

Policy brief: A gender-responsive employment recovery: Building back fairer 

Technical brief: Gender impacts of structural transformation  

Partnerships

The UN Women - ILO Joint Programme on Promoting decent employment for women through inclusive growth policies and investments in the care economy aims to promote decent work for women through inclusive growth policies and investments in the care economy. The Joint Programme stands ready to support governments and social partners in implementing gender-sensitive policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis and recovery phase. In these critical times, it is a demonstration of how the United Nations as One is working towards a gender-equitable future.