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Good practice Imported

Sello Empresa Mujer — ChileCompra's Automatic Gender Certification for Public-Procurement Suppliers

Chile · Santiago · See the Chile profile · See the Santiago profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 42% 74/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

An automatic seal in Chile's national e-procurement platform flags women-led suppliers. Certified suppliers grew to 33,673 by 2024, yet their 22.2% share of transacted value has not clearly exceeded the 25% share recorded at the 2016 launch.

33,673 count
Suppliers holding the seal (2024)
9.5 %
Year-on-year growth in certified suppliers (2023–2024)
3.915 US$ billion
State sales to certified women-led suppliers (2024)
22.2 %
Share of the public procurement market by value (2024)
0.31 → 0.4 index
Gender Perspective Participation Index (IPPG) (2022–2024)
Sello Empresa Mujer — ChileCompra's Automatic Gender Certification for Public-Procurement Suppliers

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Dirección ChileCompra
Period
2016–present
Keywords
public procurement, women's entrepreneurship, economic empowerment

Context

Sello Empresa Mujer is a certification issued automatically inside Mercado Público, Chile's national e-procurement platform, to businesses meeting a simple ownership or leadership test: for individual suppliers, verification against Civil Registry sex records; for companies, more than 50% women ownership, or a woman general manager or legal representative.

Objectives

ChileCompra (Dirección ChileCompra, part of the Ministry of Finance) launched the seal in March 2016 to address a participation gap: women made up 36% of individual suppliers on the platform but captured only 25% of transacted value. Public buyers can use the seal as an evaluation criterion when awarding contracts.

Activities

A 2022 directive automated the seal's assignment, removing the need for suppliers to apply manually.

Results

By 2024, 33,673 suppliers held the seal (up 9.5% year-on-year), generating US$3.915 billion in state sales (34.8% growth on 2023) and equal to 22.2% of the US$17.6 billion public market. ChileCompra's own Gender Perspective Participation Index (IPPG), which tracks women-led firms' relative success rate against men-led firms, rose from 0.31 to 0.4 between 2022 and 2024.

Conclusions

Measured against the 2016 baseline, however, women-led firms' overall share of transacted value (22.2% in 2024) has not clearly exceeded the 25% share recorded at launch — nearly a decade of automatic certification has grown absolute participation substantially without yet closing the underlying value-share gap.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — No published budget figures; band reflects an automated feature built into an existing national digital platform rather than a new stand-alone programme.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Running since 2016, fully automated since 2022 — a long-running national scheme.
Staffing & skills
Administered by Dirección ChileCompra (Ministry of Finance) through the Mercado Público platform, Eligibility verified automatically against Civil Registry sex records (individuals) or ownership/management data (companies)

Conditions for success

  • A 2022 directive automated seal assignment, removing the need for suppliers to apply manually
  • Public buyers can use the seal as an evaluation criterion in awarding contracts

Common failure modes

  • Women-led firms' overall share of transacted value (22.2% in 2024) has not clearly exceeded the 25% share recorded at the 2016 launch, despite growth in the number of certified suppliers

Where it fits

Governance type
national government agency, integrated into existing e-procurement infrastructure
Scale
national

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

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

Attachments

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