EİB Focuses on Gender Equality

Ege İhracatçı Birlikleri, a signatory to the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a joint initiative of UN Women and UN Global Compact, and continuing its work on gender equality, is now providing corporate support to the Million Women Mentors Program. Jak Eskinazi, Coordinator President of Ege İhracatçı Birlikleri, said that according to the Gender Equality 2021 Report published by the World Economic Forum, Turkey has fallen to 133rd place among 156 countries in gender equality globally. "According to the Gender Development Index in the 2019 Human Development Report published by UNDP, Turkey fell two places to 68th among 162 countries. According to the Sustainable Development 2021 Report, Turkey ranks 70th among 165 countries with an index score of 70.4. We have been conducting and supporting work on gender equality for a long time. The Million Women Mentors Program (MWM), through STEMconnector, is an initiative aimed at increasing interest and confidence in young women to pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) careers and leadership opportunities."

EİB to benefit young women with at least 30 mentors

Eskinazi stated, "The mission of the MWM network is to encourage young women to pursue, continue and advance in STEM careers. As EİB, we have made a two-year commitment and promised to benefit young women planning careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics with a minimum of 30 mentors during this period. The 30 mentors will consist of union personnel and board members who have received training in these fields. We also made an announcement to EİB members, informed companies about the matter and invited them to become corporate supporters." Jak Eskinazi recalled that as the first exporters' association to be a member of UN Global Compact, the world's largest sustainability initiative, they later became signatories to the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a joint initiative of UN Women and UN Global Compact. "The Million Women Mentors Program is among the work we do for gender equality. Just as we were the first Exporters' Association to sign the Global Compact, we are also the first Association to design a mentoring program for women and youth. With the Export-Up Mentoring Program, saying 'The exporters of the future believe in the power of experience,' we provided support through experienced exporters from our board members to young and women exporters who want to start exporting or develop their current exports within the scope of our sustainable export objectives. Work continues on the second phase of the program." Eskinazi stated, "Statistics tell us that gender equality has a positive contribution to happiness and social development. All countries that rank high in world happiness rankings and are on the list of developed societies are countries that have achieved gender equality. Finland, Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand, which rank in the top 10 of the world's happiest countries and are similarly ranked high in development levels, have women leaders serving as Prime Minister. Until recently, Norway had a woman leader as Prime Minister. Would the world be in this situation today if Russia and Ukraine were led by women leaders?" he said.