EBRD Sustainability Report explores focus on gender

June 23, 2020

The EBRD's Sustainability Report explores the many ways the Bank creates impact. Whether it's improving public transport, ensuring a safe water supply, repairing roads or boosting renewable energy, its investments make a real difference to the daily lives of millions of people across three continents.

Not only does the Sustainability Report provide tremendous insight into the workings of the Bank and its achievements, but it also serves as a key resource for those candidates considering applying for a job with EBRD, or preparing for a job interview.

EBRD has a strong focus on women's equality and advancement

EBRD has worked to promote inclusive and sustainable growth, focusing on building climate adaptation and resilience across its regions.

In 2019, the EBRD signed 71 projects addressing gender, youth and regional inclusion. These projects sought to enhance access to employment, skills, finance and services for young people, refugees, and other groups. Nearly three-quarters of these projects had a specific focus on gender equality.

Financing under the EBRD’s Women in Business programme, which is supported by a range of donors, has topped the €500 million mark. Through it, credit lines were provided to more than 60,000 women-led small and medium-sized companies in 18 countries. The programme offers a unique combination of financing, technical assistance and access to know-how. Active policy efforts with governments and stakeholders promote a more enabling business environment for women entrepreneurs.

In 2019, the EBRD joined the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) and received more than €19 million in donor funding to support its Women of the Steppe program in Central Asia. We-Fi is a collaborative partnership, composed of multilateral development banks (MDBs), governments and other stakeholders, designed to unlock financing for women-led/owned businesses in developing countries.

Promoting female entrepreneurship in agriculture

The EBRD’s €150 million loan supports Morocco to achieve regional and gender inclusion impact through the creation of new economic opportunities and training for local female farmers to enhance their leadership skills and participation in the agricultural sector. EBRD will commence policy engagement with the Ministry of Agriculture to support the adoption and implementation of a coordinated gender strategy for the sector.

Gender-responsive design of public transport

A €17 million loan by the EBRD will help six cities in Georgia acquire a new fleet of buses. The EBRD will support the cities to develop and implement Gender Action Plans to enhance equal opportunity policies and gender-responsive design and service provision. The project will also target regional inclusion in the transport sector by offering training to young women and men in less-developed regions of the country.

Gender-based violence and harassment

With the adoption of the ILO Convention C190 on the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the World of Work, 2019 was a momentous year for the global endeavour to address gender-based violence and harassment. The Bank's new Environmental and Social Policy and Performance Requirements include strong commitment and requirements for clients to adopt measures to effectively prevent and address any form of violence, harassment, including sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse, gender-based violence, bullying, intimidation, and/or exploitation.

Additional gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) requirements specific to workers’ protection and grievance mechanisms, as well as community safety, effectively make the EBRD’s GBVH standards the strongest among its sister IFIs. This requires the development of a sound implementation framework to support the need for systematic screening for GBVH-related risks in project appraisals and improved mitigation plans and monitoring.