The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is a forum created to address trade and regional integration issues for economies bordering the Pacific. The 21 members of APEC are called economies since APEC is focused on trade and economic growth issues, or issues that affect trade and economic growth.
APEC also aims to ensure that all residents of APEC can participate and contribute to a growing economy, and APEC economies have technical cooperation projects that support inclusive growth. Within APEC, the Policy Partnership for Women in the Economy (PPWE) aims to ensure that women also benefit from economic integration among APEC economies. The PPWE has five priority areas in women’s economic empowerment that you will see throughout this website. These five priorities guide the work that the PPWE does:
- Access to capital and assets, including through such sources as land and personal property, participation in the workforce, and financial services;
- Access to markets, including markets for goods and services produced by woman-owned enterprises;
- Skills, capacity building, and health, so that women are physically capable of a range of economic pursuits and are prepared for these pursuits both educationally and technically (because of its focus on entrepreneurship, the WE-APEC review did not the address the health aspect);
- Leadership, voice, and agency, through which women are able to contribute as professionals, and leaders in the private and public sectors;
- Innovation and technology, so that women have the same opportunities as men to access and participate in development and implementation of scientific advances and new technologies.