Celebrating International Women’s Day: Advancing Gender Equality in Public Procurement

On this International Women’s Day (IWD), we’re proud to highlight Katharina Sarter's work on socially responsible public procurement. Accounting for about one third of GDP, public procurement has increasingly become a lever for promoting equality. Katharina’s work has examined public policies and their implementation in different countries and sheds light on approaches, challenges and opportunities to lever public procurement to promote equality, fair working conditions, and more inclusive decision‑making.

Drawing on past and ongoing work, Katharina recently published a practice-oriented article for professionals working to promote gender equality that outlined key aspects of and approaches to using public procurement as a tool for fostering equality, published in the German Legal Handbook for Women’s and Gender Equality Officers. By providing a practice-oriented introduction to gender responsive public procurement and how gender equality can feature in procurements of different sizes and forms, this article outlines the linkage between public purchasing practices and equality and provides practical examples for targeted and proportionate approaches to leverage procurement in pursuit of equality.

Why this matters today

IWD reminds us that structural change doesn’t happen by accident. It is driven by people who challenge existing systems, generate new knowledge, and push for equality in every policy domain - including public procurement. Katharina’s contribution is a powerful example of this in action.

The full article is featured in the Legal Handbook for Women's and Gender Equality Officers.