Gender Parity Accelerators in Latin America 2016-2022: A Public-Private Collaboration to Accelerate Equality

In 2012, the World Economic Forum (the Forum) launched Working Groups on Gender Parity with the aim of involving more women in the economy. These later evolved into Gender Parity Accelerators, which, when introduced in Latin America and the Caribbean, were called by their Spanish name, Iniciativas de Paridad de Género (from now on referred to as IPG). From 2016 through the end of 2022, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), in collaboration with the Forum and the French Development Agency (AFD), implemented IPG in nine countries in the region: Chile, Panama, Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, and Honduras, in that order. The AFD took part in the implementation in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Ecuador after it joined the alliance in 2019. IPG are public-private collaborations that convene high-level leaders from the public and private sectors to promote solutions to accelerate the closing of economic gender gaps. In each country, the IPG offers a platform for collaboration that assists governments and companies in developing and implementing Action Plans and designing concrete measures to increase women's participation in the labor force, reduce the gender pay gap, and increase female leadership. This document analyzes the lessons learned during the last seven years of IPG development and proposes measures to strengthen the model.