World Youth Skills Day - July 15th

Date:

  

Since its declaration in 2014, World Youth Skills Day has been a key date to encourage dialogue around investment in technical and vocational education and training, which plays a critical role in building youth resilience.

More than a year into the pandemic, school and workplace closures are delaying learning and training. As a result, young people - between the ages of 15 and 24 - are particularly affected by the socio-economic consequences of the health emergency. According to the International Labour Organization in its report "Global Employment Trends for Youth 2020: Technology and the Future of Jobs", young women are twice as likely as men of the same age to be 'ninis', i.e. neither studying nor working.

Clearly, their full potential is not being tapped, although many, particularly young women, may be contributing to the economy through unpaid work.

The poor quality of jobs among youth is manifested in precarious working conditions, lack of legal and social protection, and limited opportunities for training and career progression.

Policies are needed to generate enough decent jobs in order to equip young people with the necessary skills to fully exercise them. Labor market policies introduced to take advantage of new technologies should also take gender inequalities into consideration.

It is essential that young people are included and represented in the dialogue on the future of work, ideally as members of decision-making processes. Youth must have a voice in current policy decisions forging their future.

Realizing the promise of gender equality

Women's talent and capacity is the most untapped resource in the political and economic systems of Latin America and the Caribbean. Innovation, transformation and persistence are required to achieve substantive equality, in deeds, in real life.

During the Generation Equality Forum, held in early July in Paris, two young Chilean women participated in the dialogues that outlined the roadmap for the next five years, based on a Global Acceleration Plan for Gender Equality.

In this special edition, UN Women spoke with Isidora Guzmán and Julieta Martínez.

Isadora Guzmán, a prominent inclusion activist, participated in the panel "Girls' Education," which discussed the role of education in advancing gender equity and why it is so important for girls and women.

For her part, Julieta Martínez participated in the intergenerational dialogue in which the progress and barriers to gender equality were analyzed, focusing on the Beijing Platform for Action and how it has evolved to the present day.