Activity under preparation AAP 2024 - Support to women¿s employment in the Southern Neighbourhood through gender-responsive private sector development In the Southern Neighbourhood, women¿s access to the formal labour market remains one of the lowest in the world, compromising growth perspectives for a number of countries. At the same time, the private sector represents the region's main engine for growth and decent job creation, a potential which is largely untapped for women. The action aims to support women¿s employment through a targeted angle of promoting a gender-responsive private sector development, with a specific focus on innovation and incubation in high-potential sectors, namely the care, the green and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) economies. It will take a three-fold approach: 1) establishing an enabling policy and legal environment for a gender-responsive private sector; 2) supporting gender-responsive private sector to boost women¿s employment and their economic empowerment in the workplace and in the economy at large, using the Women Empowerment Principles as main vehicle and implementing gender-responsive corporate policies and supply chains; and 3) increasing women¿s access to decent work, including for women living in vulnerable situations, by leveraging the potential of the care, green and STEM economies.The action consolidates and complements the programme adopted under the 2022 Regional Action Plan which aimed at supporting women¿s economic empowerment in the Southern Neighbourhood[1] with a focus on the nexus between access to finance, financial inclusion and digitalisation, notably for women entrepreneurs. The action will explore links with relevant facilities under the European Fund for Sustainable Development (EFSD+). It will be implemented by UN Women, as part of a comprehensive multi-stakeholder regional initiative aiming at ¿Surging Women Employment in Arab States by 5% by 2030¿, involving both the public and private sectors and International Financing Institutions (IFIs). The initiative offers a direct synergy with the Regional Team Europe Initiative (TEI) on ¿Jobs through Trade and Investment in the Southern Neighbourhood¿ and will open broader scope for donor coordination in the region under the leadership of UN Women. The action will contribute and feed into the regional policy dialogue on women economic empowerment led by the Union for the Mediterranean.[1] C(2022) 8009 final