Roundtable on Women's Economic Empowerment through Education held
The event conducted for the second year in a row and demonstrated a strong commitment of Kazakhstan and the U.S. to the noble cause of women’s equality, safety and empowerment.
The topics discussed on the roundtable strongly resonate with priorities in President Tokayev’s agenda and the President's Decree on Further Human Rights Measures, where gender equality is identified as one of major focus areas, the official website of the Kazakh Embassy in the U.S. reads.
During the session speakers had conversations on concrete projects promoting already advanced Kazakhstan-American cooperation in women empowerment, gender equality and entrepreneurship.
Kairat Kelimbetov, Governor of AIFC, noted that the AIFC received preliminary approval, subject to funding availability, to implement the U.S. State Department's Academy for Women Entrepreneurs program in Kazakhstan. It will allow one hundred women from southern regions of Kazakhstan to participate in the core curriculum program created by our U.S. partners.
Amb. Erzhan Kazykhan, Deputy Chief of Staff of the President of Kazakhstan - Special Representative of the President of Kazakhstan for International Cooperation, talked about Kazakhstan's progress in multiple dimensions of advancing women's rights. The major milestones include introduction a mandatory 30% quota for the participation of women and youth in elections and its application for the distribution of deputy mandates, adoption of the Action Plan to implement UN Security Council resolution 1325, abolishment of the list of prohibited professions for women which constituted more than 200 professions and many others.
Rachel Vogelstein, Senior Advisor, White House Gender Policy Council, shared key strategies of the Biden-Harris Administration on promoting women's empowerment globally and in Central Asia and stressed that «building the pipelines and cultivating the right enabling environment, that will empower young girls and women leaders of today to become the future leaders of tomorrow in Kazakhstan and across the region, is an important work that the United State look forward to undertaking together.»
Speakers discussed the practical example of applying gender lenses in the financial sector of Kazakhstan. Besides the dialogue was featuring the conversation on educational programs like SABIT of the U.S. Department of Commerce which provides entrepreneurs with an opportunity to have an internship in the U.S. as well as initiatives like POWER of the U.S. State Department which brings together U.S. private sector and foreign governments.
Closing the event Yerzhan Ashikbayev, Ambassador of Kazakhstan to the U.S., highlighted that interest of Kazakhstan to women's economic empowerment is prompted because women's entrepreneurship plays a significant role in creating jobs and stimulating economic growth in the country. He proposed to consider the creation of joint bilateral alliances on women's empowerment to move the cooperation to the next level.
