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Mexico is slowly advancing on the path to gender equality. Many public policies aimed at empowering women are now in place: over the past two decades, Mexico has increased investments in girls' education, greatly expanded childcare and preschool, improved gender mainstreaming in government, and ensured that female politicians are well-represented at the ballot box. Yet, despite these efforts, many Mexican women still do not feel the effects of these policies at home, at work, or in public spaces. Large gender gaps remain in educational outcomes, participation in the labour market, pay, informality status, and hours of unpaid childcare and housework. “Unlocking Mexico’s full potential,” as Mexico's National Development Plan prescribes, will depend crucially on how well Mexico closes existing gender gaps in political, social and economic life and promotes real social change. Mexico must continue to invest in social and labour market policies that empower women, and reinvigorate efforts to reduce inequalities in education, labour force participation, job quality, unpaid work, and leadership. This will require embedding gender equality objectives in all public policies and budgets, across all levels of government, and ensuring the effective implementation, enforcement, and evaluation of policies and laws to achieve inclusive outcomes.

This report examines Israel’s performance in stimulating SMEs and entrepreneurship and makes recommendations for government policy. A dual economy has gradually emerged in Israel, in which high rates of successful technology-based entrepreneurship contrast with low average productivity and growth in traditional SMEs. Israel has excellent framework conditions and programmes for technology-based start-ups and SMEs in areas such as R&D, high-level skills generation and venture capital finance. These strengths need to be maintained. At the same time, more needs to be done to spread success to all types of SMEs and all groups of the Israeli population. This report recommends a range of new and expanded interventions for example in access to credit, broad innovation, workforce skills development, management support and entrepreneurship education. It recommends underpinning these actions with a national SME and entrepreneurship policy strategy and new arrangements for inter-ministerial co-ordination.