Project profile — Women's Economic Linkages and Employment Development

• Jordan (100.00%)

• Secondary Education: Vocational training (11330) (60.00%)
• Government And Civil Society, General: Ending violence against women and girls (15180) (10.00%)
• Social services (incl youth development and women+ children):
Social services (incl youth development and women+ children) (16015) (10.00%)
Employment policy and administrative management (16020) (20.00%)

• Gender equality (principal objective)
• Environmental sustainability (cross-cutting) (not targeted)
• Participatory development and good governance (not targeted)
• Trade development (not targeted)
• Biodiversity (not targeted)
• Climate change mitigation (not targeted)
• Climate Change Adaptation (not targeted)
• Urban issues (not targeted)
• Desertification (not targeted)
• Children's issues (significant objective)
• Youth Issues (significant objective)
• Indigenous Issues (not targeted)
• Disability (not targeted)
• ICT as a tool for development (not targeted)

This project aims to remove barriers to women’s access to the labour market in Salt, Irbid, and East-Amman. It seeks to provide skills-based development in the private health sector, find solutions to child care challenges and identify safe and affordable transportation to and from work. Project activities include: (1) collaborating with Jordan's Private Hospital Association and Vocational Training Centres to develop new skills-based curricula for health workers; (2) working with the private sector to boost female employment and to reduce both the real and perceived additional costs of hiring women; and (3) linking public and private sectors to promote on-the job apprenticeships in the health administration for female graduates of the vocational training programs.

The expected outcomes for this project are: (1) increased employment of women; and (2) reduced gender-specific barriers to women's entrepreneurship and to women entering into and remaining in the workforce.

Results achieved as of March 2024 include: (1) enabled 1,087 women to graduate from WE LEAD supported training programs (643 from Medical Office Assistants, 146 from Health Social Workers, and 298 from Early Childcare Development (ECCD). Results of the endline evaluation indicate that WE LEAD contributed to the empowerment of women, with an increase in the percentage of beneficiaries who are now able to make everyday household decisions from a baseline of 86.8% to 98%; (2) increased the employment of women through businesses in health and childcare sectors by 37% in targeted regions (East Amman, Irbid, and Zarqa); (3) enabled 100% of women from the ECCD program interested in starting their home-based nurseries with support from the National Council for Family Affairs (10 women in pilot phase 1, 10 women in pilot phase 2); (4) supported 6 private sector hospitals in their efforts to create a more enabling work environment and to improve women employee’s working conditions by implementing gender-sensitive interventions and institutionalizing greater gender awareness; (5) supported 191 women to benefit from the piloted approaches to childcare. For the institutional nurseries (Al Istishari hospital, Al Istiqlal hospital, Al Khansaa hospital), a total of 71 women, 9 men and 85 children benefited from the nurseries; (6) 62% of women reported improvements in the availability of childcare services in the targeted locations, noting about a 30% increase from the baseline of 32.8%; (7) allowed 537 women to benefit from daycare or childcare services available to women through WE LEAD pilots; and (8) reached about 3.9 million people through a national gender-sensitive media campaign.

• Proactive disclosure