Building Back Better With Gender-Responsive Infrastructure – GIZ Gender Week 2021


10/03/2021

Building Back Better With Gender-Responsive Infrastructure – GIZ Gender Week 2021


Sustainable Infrastructure

Building Back Better With Gender-Responsive Infrastructure - GIZ Gender Week 2021


Together with participants of the Solutions Lab – Scaling for Sustainable Infrastructure as well as partners of the Mexican development bank Banobras and BlackRock México, EMSD promoted the debate on why infrastructure is not gender-neutral. The event highlighted the great importance of Gender-Responsive Infrastructure for the COVID-19 recovery as well as its potential to attract investor interest.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic underlined the weaknesses of existing infrastructure systems worldwide: a lack of basic health and sanitation facilities, inadequate transportation and energy networks and insufficient digital infrastructure still affect the well-being of billions of people.

In Mexico, these challenges are exacerbated by a very low level of infrastructure investment. To tackle this investment gap, the Mexican Development Bank Banobras has identified sustainability as a key aspect to attract investor interest in infrastructure projects. Together with EMSD and inspired by the Gender Working Group of its Solutions Lab – Scaling for Sustainable Infrastructure, Banobras is now starting their journey to foster truly inclusive infrastructure developments – through a gender-responsive approach that leaves no one behind.

Contrary to the flawed yet widespread perception that infrastructure is gender-neutral, women and girls still face a lack of access to basic infrastructure services such as clean water, sanitation or safe public transport. In the long run, all of this undermines their ability to integrate into and benefit from public life in all its social, economic and political aspects.

Against this background, taking sustainable infrastructure with a gender-responsive approach in the centre of any recovery process can trigger enormous social and environmental progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). What is more, sustainable infrastructure projects also mobilizes private capital – with gender-lens investing as a rapidly growing trend in this.

Please find the recording of the event here.