OREANDA-NEWS. Approximately 200 leaders from the private sector, governments, multilateral development banks, bilateral agencies and civil society will meet at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) headquarters in Washington D.C. on June 7 and 8 to share successful and innovative initiatives to help shape the gender equality agenda in the coming years.

The goal of this World Summit - "Stereotypes & Opportunities: Women’s Economic Empowerment," - is to facilitate the exchange of best practices and evidence-based approaches to advance the economic empowerment of women worldwide.

What are the challenges being faced and the role that governments, private sector and public-private partnerships must play to advance in improving their economic opportunities, among others, are questions for which answers will be sought at this summit. Specifically, the female labor market participation, the wage gap, selecting no studies or work in traditionally female sectors, entrepreneurship and women's leadership, will be among the topics to be discussed in depth during this event.

Despite the growing recognition that economic empowerment of women is essential to achieve development objectives such as reducing poverty, promoting inclusive economic growth and productivity-increasing, many women around the world They continue to see limited their ability to achieve economic change in their lives.

"These challenges threaten our ability to create economic opportunities for both women and men," said IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno. "For this reason, we have prioritized an ambitious gender agenda at work within our institution and in the region."

Panelists will include experts from the five multilateral development banks that form the gender working group (the African Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and the IDB) as well as representatives of numerous regional governments, including: Margarita Cede?o, Vice President of the Dominican Republic; Jos? Molinas, Technical Secretary of Planning of Paraguay; Eric Parrado, Superintendent of Banks and Financial Institutions of Chile; Yokasta Guzman, Director of Public Procurement Dominican Republic, among others.