CABEI and UN Women promote gender equality and empowerment of women in Central America

Tegucigalpa, April 28th, 2021.- In order to ensure that financial institutions in the Central American region have a gender-sensitive approach and actions and that their products, services and channels promote the financial inclusion of women, this Wednesday the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) and UN Women kicked off a series of webinars entitled "Ecosystem for Effective and Comprehensive Financial Inclusion of Women."

The virtual spaces respond to the four intervention axes related to gender equality and women's empowerment: accentuate the involvement of development banks in favor of gender equality, increase the number of financial flows to projects with a gender perspective, contribute to policies to combat climate change with a gender perspective and improve dialogue and collaboration with all parties involved in gender issues.

"At CABEI, we are aware of the importance of empowering women to achieve Central American integration with gender equity and social inclusion, and for this reason we are very pleased to be able to begin today with this first activity related to the Women, Local Economy and Territories (MELYT) program," said CABEI Executive Vice President, Mr. Jaime Díaz.

He added that CABEI is also working on initiatives to the same end, such as a Gender Equity Policy, as well as a Strategy that is currently being developed and which will allow the coordination of a Gender Action Plan for its application both internally and in the operations financed by the Bank, with the French Development Agency's (AFD) technical and financial support.

He highlighted that in 2015 CABEI created the Regional Women's Entrepreneurial Financing Program (FEM), an initiative that contributes to the expansion of financial services for gender equality and women's empowerment at a regional level, hand in hand with the main regional gender reference institutions. Since its creation through 2021, FEM has disbursed a total of US$27.6 million through CABEI's financial intermediation network.

CABEI's Executive President, Dr. Dante Mossi, considers that "Women's financial inclusion has been and continues to be an important challenge in our economies; however, it is important to take advantage of the current context to change this reality by guaranteeing access to different financial products with components that strengthen their role as key agents in our region's economic and social development.

The first virtual webinar session was attended by the Executive Vice President, Jaime Díaz; the Regional Coordinator of the UN Women MELYT program, Rita Cassisi; the MELYT program consultant for the LAC regional mapping of women's financial inclusion experiences, Cecilia Lazarte; the General Manager of the Central Bank of Ecuador, Veronica Artola Jarrín; the Deputy Sustainability Manager of the Banco Estado de Chile, Carla Romero Villarroel; the IDB Representative in El Salvador, César A. Falconi; and the Deputy Regional Director of UN Women for Latin America and the Caribbean, Cecilia Alemany.