INFORMAL ECONOMY AND GENDER>>Experiences and programmes of interest

Cinterfor/ILO

• Institutional Programme to Strengthen the Vocational and Technical Training of Low-Income Women - FORMUJER

This programme has been jointly financed by the IADB. Cinterfor/ILO has been in charge of its regional coordination and technical and methodological monitoring, while the running of its National Pilot Projects has been assigned to the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Human Resources Training of Argentina, the INFOCAL Foundation of Bolivia and the INA (National Training Institute) of Costa Rica through their National Executive Units.

The Programme's objectives have been: boosting the quality, relevance and gender equity of technical-vocational education and training in the region, bringing about favourable conditions for equal participation by women in TVET, matching training supply to current demands of labour markets, raising the technical level of women and widening the range of their training options and disseminating the models and methodologies developed in the programme throughout Latin America.

• Occupational Project

This Occupational Project (OP) strategy has been developed and approved within the framework of the Formujer Programme. It intends to contribute to the work of trainers and counsellors in training for work institutions, labour mediation spaces (employment exchanges, job placement offices) and community assistance centres (NGOs, churches, neighbourhood associations, etc). From the experiences developed during the execution of the Programme it has been found that people enhance their employability when: - they are capable of adapting their experiences, abilities and needs by developing competencies to face the labour context and see themselves as builders of their own destiny, identifying their own possibilities and difficulties as well as those offered by the environment. The OP intends to approach the work on employability by means of training and follow-up actions in order to design individual or collective occupational projects for men and women who have employment problems or who are unemployed. By clicking on this link you will have access to a description of this strategy and its tool box where you may find varied resources and materials.

Ministry of Labour and Social Security (Uruguay)

• Programme for the Promotion of Equal Opportunities for Women Employment and Vocational Training - Proimujer

The general objective of the programme is to promote an active employment policy in the field of training. This policy is intended to increase the quality of women's labour supply according to the requirements of the labour market regarding new competencies.
The target population are women who live in urban or rural areas across the country and have lost their job or are looking for a job for the first time or are in any restrictive employment situation.

ILO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean

• Incorporating the Gender Dimension to Poverty Eradication and Employment Generation Policies in Latin America
  

The main objective of the Programme is to facilitate the integration of the gender approach to the strategies of poverty fighting and the employment and income generation policies and programmes through enhancing the institutional capacity of governments, trade unions and entrepreneurial organisations and social entities with relevant experience.

ILO Sub regional Office for Andean countries

• Poverty Eradication, Employment Generation and Gender in the Informal Sector
  

The main objective of the project is to contribute to the reduction of poverty and Decent Work deficits in informal economy by enhancing the gender and ethnicity/race dimensions of the strategies, policies and programmes of poverty eradication and job generation that are being designed and implemented in selected countries of Latin America.