Building Project Gender Infrastructure — from the Ground up

Gender equality is central to the World Bank Group's goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. As part of the strategy, the World Bank pays particular attention to incorporate gender into project design and implementation. The Lao PDR Competitiveness and Trade Project is an example of a project that makes a deliberate effort to include gender across its structure, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. In so doing, it views gender consideration as not just a box to tick, but rather as a core topic within analysis, activities, and indicators.

The Competitiveness and Trade Project which began in 2018 and was scaled up in 2021, works to simplify business regulations, facilitate trade, and improve firm-level competitiveness in Laos, and is being implemented by the Lao Ministry of Industry and Commerce. It is financed through a $10 million International Development Assistance credit and a $9.5 million grant through the Lao Competitiveness and Trade Multi-Donor Trust Fund, which is administered by the World Bank and supported by Australia, Ireland, and the United States.

Gender mainstreaming started on day one of project conception. The analytics that informed its design explored the specific trade and competitiveness barriers faced by women-led firms in Laos, including small business size, poor capacity, limited access to finance and markets, and the lack of clear formal channels for official authorization. The project activities were designed to address those barriers, including through gender-sensitive awareness-raising on trade and business reforms, plus rules and regulations, capacity building for counterparts and beneficiaries, gender-sensitive access to finance and business advice, and public-private dialogue. To measure progress, the results framework incorporates gender-sensitive indicators. 

The gender activities are carried out by the government’s National Implementation Unit through a “gender infrastructure” embedded in the project. This consists of two elements:

• A network of gender focal points appointed within all project implementing agencies.
• A comprehensive gender capacity building program for both National Implementation Unit and implementing agency staff. Training activities cover topics on the role of trade in promoting gender equality, how to respond to specific challenges faced by women-led firms during the COVID-19 pandemic, and prevention and mitigation of risk of sexual exploitation, abuse or harassment.

A key component of the project is the Business Assistance Facility, or BAF, which offers grants and technical advice to companies wishing to expand, improve or adapt their business. Like the other components, the Business Assistance Facility operates with an embedded gender lens, seeking to maximize opportunities for women entrepreneurs including through gender-sensitive communication nationwide. To date, 61% of the 233 grants approved by the Facility have benefitted women-led firms, well ahead of the project goal of 40%. Similarly, 64% percent of the 1,333 firms receiving free direct advisory and mentoring are women-led. All technical staff working at the Business Assistance Facility are women and according to Project Coordinator Vilaichit Senemangthong, while Lao women have a strong tradition of running small businesses, gender barriers have until now made it harder for women to develop their companies into major concerns. “We have a team of confident women here, though,” she says, “and female entrepreneurs feel comfortable approaching us for advice and assistance”.

Oner of the Faciltiy’s satisfied customers is Mrs. Viengsavanh Khammanyvong , who used her own money to set up a small specialist vegetable production farm with her husband. Mrs Viengsavanh went to the Business Assistance Facility for advice on how to grow the business, and says she has now developed the Pawan Farm to the point where she has over 30 employees growing high-quality produce.

Progress so far

When the Lao Competitiveness and Trade Project activities started, staff at the National Implementation Unit and implementing agencies had little experience in making trade and business environment projects gender sensitive. Three and a half years in, the gender infrastructure has been developed across all components and several outputs delivered:

1. 14 gender focal points appointed in all implementing agencies, and meet regularly to facilitate gender dialogue between the agencies and the National Implementation Unit, and to support project implementation.
2. A Gender Action Plan designed, validated, and launched. This includes regular quarterly training and sensitization for implementation unit staff, gender focal points, and female project clients.
3. Official project definitions of ‘’women-led’’ and ‘’women-owned’’ firms were agreed by key implementations agencies, and are now systematically used to track progress against gender-sensitive indicators.
4. A trade and gender study highlighting that while laws and policies tend to be gender neutral in principle, in practice they often are not. Processes in areas such as business registration, taxation, and access to finance and land, are all more troublesome for female entrepreneurs.
5. Gender-sensitive messages have been created for use in project dissemination to attract the attention of more women entrepreneurs.

Next steps

Under the Gender Action Plan, the National Implementation Unit will continue delivering regular training sessions to implementing agency gender focal points, bringing in external speakers. In March 2022, a session with women traders and entrepreneurs will raise awareness on rules and procedures for registering a new business. A high-profile launch is planned for the project gender study, to be chaired by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and the National Commission for the Advancement of Women, Mothers and Children, involving stakeholders from the private sector, civil society, academia, and the development community.

Each project component has already started using the gender-sensitive outreach strategy, with the implementation unit and gender focal points identifying key messages for content development and dedicated channels for dissemination.