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Good practice Imported

Panama's Gender Equality Seal (Sello de Igualdad de Género) for Companies

Panama · Panama City · See the Panama profile · See the Panama City profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 62% 56/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 2018, Panama's MITRADEL and UNDP have run the Gender Equality Seal, part of a UNDP network in 17 countries with 1,000+ certified firms. In 2023, eight Panamanian firms — incl. Banco General, Copa Airlines — earned gold recertification for cutting wage gaps.

17 countries
Countries in the UNDP Gender Equality Seal network (since 2009)
1,000+ companies
Companies certified worldwide (since 2009)
1.5 million workers
Workers reached worldwide (estimated) (since 2009)
8 companies
Panamanian companies earning gold recertification (2023)
Panama's Gender Equality Seal (Sello de Igualdad de Género) for Companies

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Ministry of Labour and Labour Development (MITRADEL) & UNDP Panama
Period
2018–present
Keywords
corporate certification, private sector, gender pay gap, labour policy

Context

Since 2018, Panama's Ministry of Labour and Labour Development (MITRADEL) has run the Sello de Igualdad de Genero (Gender Equality Seal) jointly with UNDP, certifying employers that meet standards on reducing wage gaps, increasing women's presence in decision-making roles, work-life balance and eradicating workplace harassment.

Objectives

The Panama seal is part of a wider UNDP-backed Gender Equality Seal network active in 17 countries since 2009, with more than 1,000 companies certified worldwide and an estimated 1.5 million workers reached.

Activities

Certification includes re-audits for gold-level recertification, meaning firms are checked again against the standard rather than certified only once.

Results

In 2023, eight Panamanian companies -- including Banco General and Copa Airlines -- earned gold-level recertification, and in February 2024 MITRADEL itself obtained the seal's public-sector Silver category.

Conclusions

The programme is voluntary and certification-based rather than a statutory mandate, and the sources reviewed do not publish an independently measured, Panama-specific wage-gap-reduction figure attributable to the seal -- the evidence here is the scale and continuity of third-party certification, not a quantified pay-gap outcome.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — No cost-per-outcome or administrative-efficiency data was found for the certification process.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Certification running since 2018; the 2023 cohort of 8 firms went through gold-level re-audit rather than first-time certification.
Staffing & skills
MITRADEL runs the programme jointly with UNDP; certification re-audits verify firms against the standard for gold-level recertification.

Conditions for success

  • Recertification (re-audit rather than one-off certification) for the gold tier, and a public-sector Silver category that MITRADEL itself obtained in February 2024.

Common failure modes

  • The programme is voluntary and certification-based, and no independently measured, Panama-specific wage-gap-reduction figure has been published.

Where it fits

Governance type
public-private certification scheme (ministry + UNDP)
Scale
national
Income level
high-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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