Advancing Gender Equality in the Workplace

The Egyptian economy relies heavily on strengthening startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and enhancing employment opportunities. Private sector companies have realised that sustainable growth requires moving past compliance-driven frameworks and recognition of diversity as a core economic strategy. While businesses face operational challenges and productivity gaps, integrating gender-responsive practices unlocks measurable performance and innovation gains.

The Women on Track programme directly supports HR professionals in participating private sector companies, strengthening workplace policies and practices. Across the participating companies, 60,000 employees benefit directly from improved working conditions and company policies.

Women on Track, implemented through Invest for Jobs initiative, jointly implemented with WoMENa programme, supports private sector companies and managers in moving from awareness to institutional change. Through capacity building, policy reviews and company-specific interventions, the initiative equips HR teams to identify gender-related barriers, strengthen inclusive and safe workplace systems, and connect gender equality with measurable business needs. As a key product developed through the Women on Track programme, the GAINS (Gender-informed Analysis for Inclusive and Sustainable Business) methodology provides a structured approach to gender-informed analysis, targeted interventions and measurable business impact, helping companies embed gender equality into their policies, practices and organisational culture.

Designed as a multi-phase journey, Women on Track applies the GAINS approach to reposition gender equality as a business solution rather than a standalone social intervention. It supports Egyptian companies, particularly in male-dominated sectors, to identify specific business pains points such as turnover, absenteeism, weak reporting and trust in safety systems, promotion barriers, low policy awareness and legal exposure, and uses gender informed analysis to design targeted solutions with measurable business and workplace outcomes.

The programme equipped 14 HR managers throughout a one-year period with six sessions long learning journey covering gender and bias, anti-harassment, workplace culture and safety, legal compliance, women’s career progression and retention, and HR’s role in organisational change. This was complemented by policy reviews and company specific interventions to strengthen gender responsiveness, safety, reporting, accountability and inclusion. The GAINS methodology connected each company’s challenges to gender informed analysis, targeted intervention, measurable impact and culture activation, which shifted the mindset from implementing “gender activities” to solving concrete business problems through a gender lens.

Overall, Women on Track engaged with 14 different companies, Wadi Foods, Breadfast, Banque Misr, Bosta, Raya Holding, Sutherland, Giza Systems, EgyBrit, Kuehne+Nagel, Elsewedy Electrometer, Rowad Modern Engineering, Siemens Mobility, Koinz and Contact Holding, representing around 60,000 employees, with 43,689 women and men directly benefiting through company-specific and tailored improved working conditions and institutional policies. Invest for Jobs supported capacity building, policy reviews, practical interventions and documentation of field-tested lessons, culminating in the Women on Track Manual to enable replication and sustainable organisational change.

Practical applications of the project included examples such as Wadi Foods adopting amended gender responsive policies, Breadfast implementing a business case intervention, Banque Misr advancing governance and procedural work, Sutherland strengthening diagnostic readiness, and Bosta driving operational policy drafting.