About the Project

 

The APEC Putrajaya Vision 2040 envisages strong, balanced, secure, sustainable and inclusive growth as a key economic driver towards achieving an open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful Asia-Pacific community by 2040. The Vision commits APEC to pursue quality growth that delivers benefits and wellbeing for all, including women.

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To help make this a reality, APEC Leaders adopted the La Serena Roadmap for Women and Inclusive Growth (2019–2030), supported by an Implementation Plan with concrete action steps in five key areas: enhancing women’s access to capital and assets; markets; skills and capacity building; leadership opportunities, voice and agency; and innovation and technology. This work is further reinforced through the Aotearoa Plan of Action, which guides implementation of the Putrajaya Vision’s economic, trade, and structural reform priorities in ways that strengthen inclusion and resilience across the region.

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Services will play a vital role in enabling APEC economies to progress these objectives. Services are the largest productive sector in nearly all APEC economies and the largest employer of women across all skill levels. The potential for services to provide new and expanded opportunities for women has grown significantly in recent years with the region’s shift towards “servicification”—a rising share of services in production, investment, trade, and consumption—alongside the digitalisation of services trade. With over 60% of services trade now carried out in digitised form, women and women-led services firms can more readily participate in regional and global markets, creating opportunities for women’s professional advancement and stronger outcomes for gender equality and inclusivity.

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The APEC Group on Services (GOS) has undertaken activities to analyse the implications of evolving services trade for women, and to explore the barriers women face in participating in services trade both as individual service suppliers and as entrepreneurs. These activities have included workshop presentations, public-private dialogue, policy discussions, and the publication of research outputs. This webpage brings together key APEC materials developed through this work and is intended to remain a living page, updated with future activities and knowledge outputs as they become available.

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This site is divided into four main sections.​ These can be navigated to via the menu in the top right. This site is intended to be a resource for policymakers with interests in women and trade in services, researchers/academics and their students in the field, and businesspeople seeking a deeper appreciation of policy debates and how they might affect their enterprises and operations.

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