Page 42 - Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities - A U4SSC deliverable

Figure 11: A data visualisation showing the amount of government contracts awarded to women,
published on the DGCP website

The challenges

As with any policy designed to favour a specific group, there are risks involved. For example,
companies might employ a token number of women simply to gain preferential status. The proactive
approach taken by the DGCP in seeking out and meeting women at events and workshops made
this less of a concern.

By supervising the registration process, government officials were able to verify that women either
owned or had majority participation in a business. Once a women-owned business was added to
the database, it was important to track what happened next.

This required painstaking work to add gender markers or “tags” to government data, a process
known as “disaggregation”. Once the tags were in place, the DGCP was able to see which women-
owned businesses had won contracts, what type of contracts were awarded to them, and for what
amount – crucial information for measuring the success of the policy.

Next steps

The Dominican Republic has begun sharing its experience on gender inclusion with neighbouring
countries, starting with El Salvador and Costa Rica. Similar schemes have been launched across
Latin America, with Chile and the city of Buenos Aires introducing certification for women-owned
businesses.

As governments react to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, there is a risk of gender inclusion
slipping down the agenda. The challenge will be to ensure that women-owned businesses don’t
end up back where they started and can play an equal role in the recovery.

28 Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities | May 2023