Date: 11 October 2018 

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

On the margins of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) Conference: “women build inclusive societies,” the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Regional Hub for the Arab States in partnership with the UK Behavioral Insights Team will hold a half-day side event on the use of behavioral insights as a tool for fostering women’s economic empowerment in the Arab region.

Behavioral insights draw on diverse disciplines such as behavioral economics and neuroscience to explain human behavior and decision making. For the past several years, UNDP has been experimenting with behavioral insights to lead to better diagnosis of challenges and better design of policies and programmes, in areas such as gender-based violence, healthcare, and environment. Behavioral insights are increasingly being used in the context of entrepreneurship, both to develop effective entrepreneur ecosystems (macro level) and to support individual entrepreneurs (micro level).

During the half-day side event, UNDP will facilitate an opening discussion of behavioral insights followed by a hands-on immersion into how they can be used to address the challenges to women’s economic empowerment in the Arab region and to create a path to success for women and young women entrepreneurs.  Special speakers will be several policy makers, entrepreneurs and youth entrepreneurs from UNDP’s Youth Leadership Programme (YLP). YLP was launched in 2015 with the aim of empowering youth and promoting their role as agents of change in their communities. Since then, it has been providing youth in the Arab States region with the inspiration, assistance, and platforms necessary for pursuing their ideas for social change. Experiences shared by participating YLP change-makers will be the basis for the hands-on activity during this session. We invite policy makers, entrepreneurs, development actors and others to join us for this interactive session. The event will be facilitated by innovation for development experts from UNDP and its partners.

Check out Sarah Poole, deputy director regional bureau for Arab States (UNDP), speech during (UfM) Conference: “women build inclusive societies"

Statement of Sarah Poole deputy director regional bureau for Arab States (UNDP): Behavioral Insights for Women’s Economic Empowerment