Lebanon’s multifaceted crisis is happening within a context of deep structural inequalities. In fact, the country has one of the highest overall gender gaps in the world (ranking 145 out of 153 in the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report 2020 and one of the lowest rates of women’s labor market participation, hovering at 29% for women. Designed to improve the employability skills and create job opportunities for some 1,000 Lebanese individuals, the workforce development component of USAID’s Community Support Program (CSP) aims to address this issue by encouraging women to participate in traditionally male-dominated sectors. As of August 2022, CSP succeeded in awarding six Jobs, Education, and Training (JET) scholarships to female participants in the Repair & Maintenance of industrial machinery (R&M) vocational course at Tamkeen Vocational Institute, a partner TVET in Tripoli in northern Lebanon.

“I decided to take this course because there are too few women in this sector and I wanted challenge the biases in society by showing that women can also succeed in this work,” stated Sara Ibrahim, JET scholarship recipient who is currently undertaking the R&M vocational course at Tamkeen Institute in Tripoli.