Why would private companies cooperate?
IA: The question would rather be: why would companies not care to create opportunities for women? Women represent an enormous potential for the private sector to tap into. Just look at the IT (information technology) sector. In Rwanda we have worked with companies to develop ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) scholarships for girls and young women in learning institutions to enable them in a later stage in their lives to compete in the labour market or run their own businesses. UNIFEM has very successfully pursued a similar approach with global IT company CISCO systems, initially in Jordan and now also in Morocco where we helped introduce training for women in 12 out of 43 Cisco networking academies. Today, nearly half the 900 students in the E-Quality academies are women about 60 percent find jobs within the first three months after graduation. Globally, research has shown that companies benefit from greater corporate representation of women. In analysing the companies t
