Jimena Serrano is a gender, diversity and inclusion officer in the IDB Invest Advisory Services team in Washington DC. Since 2015, she has advised IDB Invest clients in promoting practices to ensure equal access to opportunities for men and women in the business world, including leadership positions, value chains, and strategies to meet the needs of underrepresented groups as a market opportunity. She has designed gender programs tied to results in the context of blended finance and was one of the leaders in the design of a business tool based on the Women's Empowerment Principles (known as the WEP tool). Before her arrival at IDB Invest, Jimena worked in the public policy consulting area of The Economist Intelligence Unit; she was also part of the core team that prepared the Report on the Full Participation of Women and Girls for the Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation. She is a lawyer from the Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia and has a master's degree in international economics from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
By closing the technology and gender digital divide, we could add about $2 trillion to global GDP, and prevent the creation of wider gender gaps as automation replaces the less-qualified workforce, frequently women, in larger numbers.
Unconscious or not, gender biases leave millions of women on the sidelines of financial inclusion, and millions of dollars in foregone profits for banks on the table. Reducing gender bias in lending is key as the pandemic recedes, so that women-led businesses help to propel the recovery.
Investments in infrastructure are key to an inclusive and job-creating recovery, and promote access to more and better services for lower-income households. But women are still little involved in this kind of projects.
If we want the benefits of the energy transition extended to women, then private sector-led workforce development – focused on female employment in construction, currently very low – is critical.
Women face hurdles to access jobs in the high-growing renewable energy industry. More than 80% new jobs created by the decarbonization agenda will be in male-dominated sectors. Blended finance solutions are an important tool to incentivize sponsors to take proactive steps to dismantle these barriers to gender equality.
Companies in Latin America cannot find the human talent they’re looking for. An international survey of 41,000 companies found that more than 60% of employers in countries like Brazil and Peru have problems filling vacancies. In Costa Rica, more than 45% of the companies surveyed are dealing with this—they simply cannot find the right people.