The Union of Mediterranean Confederations of Enterprises BUSINESSMED, represented by its General Secretary Mrs Jihen Boutiba, took part in the High-Level Working Group: Seminar on the participation of women in the labour marke on the 21^st and 22^nd of March 2018 in Brussels, Belgium.

The meeting focused on the implementation of the 2016 UfM Ministerial Declaration and the preparation of the next Ministerial Conference, scheduled to take place in 2019. The first day of the high-level working group of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) was dedicated to the seminar on the participation of women in the labour market. It addressed the structural challenges that women are confronted with when entering the labour market in the various Mediterranean countries through a series of presentations. Speakers were presenting studies pertaining to the employment situation of women in these countries to reiterate the need to empower women economically. Southern Mediterranean representatives on the other hand shared practices as to what they have done so far with regard to this challenge and as to how they have addressed the issue – next to EU countries sharing their views in the afternoon. The second day was devoted to the recent development on social dialogue where Mrs. Boutiba intervened as a high-level speaker to present the progress and results achieved under the project SOLiD and the state of implementation of the charter on Social Dialogue.

The seminar allowed the social partners, i.e. both employers and workers, to search for new ways how to reduce the gender gap in practice by taking into account the specificities of each country.