Jordan records one of the world"s lowest female labour force participation rates (about 14%), despite high educational attainment among young women. The gap is especially acute in technical, green and creative sectors: women remain markedly underrepresented, with only 5.4% participation in relevant vocational programmes. The constraint is not missing policy frameworks, but entrenched gender norms and structural barriers-limited transport and childcare, workplace discrimination-combined with insufficient gender-responsive implementation capacity within the TVET system. These factors restrict women"s access to non-stereotypical training pathways and their transition into decent work, particularly during the ongoing TVET system reform.
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) supports Jordan through the project "Empowering Women for Technical and Green Crafts Professions and in Career Development (Fursati)", implemented by GIZ in the areas of Gender, TVET, Employment. The overall objective is to improve employment prospects, especially for young women, in green, technical and creative sectors.
The module is organised around four outputs:
- Output 1 strengthens the Ministry of Education"s (MoE) institutional capacities to consistently implement TVET reform in a gender-transformative, labour market oriented manner.
- Output 2 enhances practice orientation and gender-responsive design of training programmes at BTEC girls" schools in green, technical and creative fields.
- Output 3 builds foundations for social and behavioural change on women employment in selected communities.
- Output 4 improves labour market relevant trainings and transition to employment measures, particularly for young women.
The contractor delivers three work packages (WPs):
WP1 (cross-cutting; 50% to Output 1 and 50% to Output 2): establish and manage flexible pools of short term experts (national and international) to provide technical backstopping to the GIZ team and partners; offer short term expertise to set up sustainable knowledge management and dissemination of lessons learned.
WP2 (macro-level reform support; Output 1): provide competence and organisational development to strengthen MoE"s gender-responsive technical and management capacities, structures and processes; support organisational restructuring and change management in the TVET reform; advise on positioning TVET for the future of work, including AI; co-develop a Gender Equity and Social Inclusion framework with MoE and stakeholders, including capacity building for directorates, BTEC school management and teachers; advise on evaluating, improving and implementing gender relevant strategies in education and training; support gender transformative, labour market relevant career guidance in secondary schools; and set up M&E systems with data collection and analysis to track effectiveness.
WP3 (regional BTEC implementation; Output 2): provide technical advisory support to selected BTEC girls" schools to make the programs practise-oriented and gender responsive; to deliver capacity development for BTEC staff, to offer targeted institutional and organisational advise to the MoE to fully implement the BTEC system (structures, processes, facilities); and to guide schools in establishing and strengthening partnerships with the private sector for gender sensitive, practice oriented training (including work based learning and participation in career guidance).
Direct target groups are girls and young women aged 13-30 seeking first employment or re entry, notably TVET students and graduates. Key intermediaries include MoE technical experts and managers, as well as female teachers and principals of BTEC girls" schools. The geographic focus is the governorates of Karak, Aqaba and Amman, with emphasis on East Amman. The contractor deploys a team leader, one key expert (employment promotion in TVET and secondary education) and three pools of short term experts over approximately 24 months.