Context:
Egypt, with a population of 91.51 million and GDP $330.8 billion, has an unemployment rate of 12%. Youth constitute 13.5% of the total population and 20.7% of the working-age population. The male-female salary gap is up to 35% in the public sector and 80% in the private sector. While the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training (NEET) is 26.9%, the proportion of female youth (35.2%) is higher than that of male youth (18.9%). The average educational attainment is 8 school years in Egypt where the adjusted net enrolment rate in upper secondary education reached 64.8% in 2014. Egyptian youth exhibit low participation in civil society whereby less than 9% had volunteered in an organization in 2014.
Women@Work targets Egyptian public university graduates aging 21 to 30 years. Participants should be committed and available 8 hours a day, 6 days a week for 10 consecutive weeks; and should be ready for volunteer work during the 10th week.
Implementation of programme/ initiative:
Women@Work is a partnership between AMIDEAST Egypt and the International Labor Organization. The program aims at enhancing the job prospects and ability to find decent work of female youth graduating from public universities.
Main challenges:
- N/A
Results achieved:
In 2015, 20 recent female graduates obtained the Training of Trainers Women@Work program during the pilot stage. In return, they trained another 85 teenage girls with entry-job skills for 50 hours. Eighteen out of the 20 participants found jobs directly after graduation; three of which became certified “job entry skills” trainers.
In 2016, the program expanded and provided ToT for 200 female youth, from Cairo and Alexandria, who reached 3000 other young women. The vast majority of participants (82%) were employed within three months of the program’s completion. Participants completed, in 10 weeks, 270 hours of training divided as follows: 135 hours in English for the Workplace, 30 hours in Computer Skills, 74 hours in Job related skills, and 31 hours in career development.
Moving Forward:
N/A
Replicability:
N/A
References:
AHDR 2016
Women’s school-to-work transition in the Arab Mediterranean countries, 2017
World Bank, 2016
OECD Youth in the MENA region, 2016
International Labor Organization, 2016
http://www.amideast.org/news-resources/press-release/egypt/amideast-ilo-launch-employability-skills-initiative-women-egypt
http://www.amideast.org/egypt/academic-and-cultural-exchange/skills-success-women-work-program-2016
Project Details
Date: October 12, 2017