Enhancing Female Employability
“This was the beginning. We cannot unsee gender issues, the challenges, and the needs of female students. We need guidance and to personalize our services.“
Université Centrale Group Career Center staff shared the above quote about the first time they had analyzed gender disaggregation, highlighting several constraints female students and alums were experiencing in seeking employment and career progression after graduation.
Young women struggle to employment in Tunisia, even with university degrees. Women account for 42% of the higher education students and 63% of the university graduates. But their labor force participation rate is 26.2%, compared to 66.3% for men (World Bank, 2023). Greater educational attainment has not led to better labor market outcomes and higher earnings, as Tunisian women earn 34% less than men (World Bank 2023).
The institutions within the Université Centrale Group are part of Honoris United Universities, committed to guaranteeing the employability of their students and alumni through impactful career services. This dedication to fostering career advancement is central to their overarching mission of Education for Impact. To improve employability outcomes for students and alums, Honoris is improving its inclusive career services and addressing existing gender biases that female graduates face when transitioning from school to work through a partnership with IFC’s Vitae and the Women’s Employment Program.
Together, IFC and Honoris developed a gender advisory pilot to increase the awareness of gender gaps and strengthen employer engagement by engaging in dialogue on gender-inclusive best practices and building a network of private sector gender champions with partners. This pilot used collaborating, learning, and adapting to improve the effectiveness of the capacity-building support for career development and to their private sector employer partners in advancing equal employment and career development opportunities for women and men in Tunisia. Lastly, the pilot, which includes IFC’s Gender Advisory team and Industry specialists, advised on Honoris United Universities’ gender strategy.
Preparing students for the job market
The capacity-building webinars with Honoris’ career services teams focused on how to customize their services to meet the needs of their students, especially female students. The webinars focused on understanding the gender issues facing female and male students, knowledge gaps, and the resources needed for students to find employment and succeed in their careers. The Gender Advisory team shared gender-smart solutions to help students gain more information about career fields and how best to support them in applying for jobs, preparing for job interviews, and negotiating their salary.
Making the private sector accountable for inclusive workplaces
The pilot engaged employers, like EY, PWC, MSH, and Coficab, in dialogue on real workplace gender issues, starting with the pay and leadership gaps. The Gender Advisory team conducted six webinars focused on the private sector’s vital role in making employment more inclusive. The team shared gender-based constraints facing employability for female graduates and effective strategies to create a positive enabling environment for female and male employees. Specifically, inclusive policies, procedures, and practices that would help the employer to attract talent, be seen as an employer of choice, and improve the perception of the private sector to women, as women in Tunisia tend to target working for the public sector or stay unemployed as they cannot find “appropriate” jobs. (World Bank, 2014).Employers were also able to share their perspectives on supporting gender inclusion in the workplace, while the Honoris career services team talked about how to engage potential employers on the issues facing women in the Tunisian labor market.
Taking action on Gender Equity
Concluding the consultations, the IFC Gender Advisory team advised Honoris on their gender strategy by supporting the career services team to rationalize their gender strategy and developing the action plan for Université Centrale Group (Université Centrale, AAC, UPSAT, and IMSET) and Ecole Supérieure Privée d’Ingénierie et de Technologies (ESPRIT). Each team defined a road map of what specific gender-supporting activities they would launch. All institutions committed to investing more in workshops focused on best practices, job searches, and interview prep, including salary negotiation. They also committed to launching a gender-focused mentoring program to sensitize women about equity issues in the workplace and empower them to address the pay gap and leadership issues.
The IFC Gender Advisory supported Honoris United Universities in affirming its vision and strategy on gender equality and commitment to enhancing career opportunities for its female students.
Honoris United Universities is a network of 16 private higher-learning institutions spread across 10 African countries with over 85,000+ students on 75+ campuses, learning centers, and online platforms.IFC’s Vitae is a distinctive program that helps steer higher education institutions toward adopting strategies to align themselves with market dynamics better. Vitae helps IFC clients develop higher employability standards in emerging markets and improve student learning outcomes in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
IFC’s Women’s Employment Program provides gender-smart business solutions to IFC clients in Manufacturing, Agribusiness, and Services (including Health and Education sectors) to create inclusive workplaces. Through the program, IFC partners with private sector businesses globally to assess their practices on gender equality and advise them on advancing women’s employment in their workplace.
