The Diplomat
The Association of Spanish Diplomatic Women (AMDE) has organised a debate today, Monday, on gender equality in the Foreign Service.
According to AMDE’s Twitter account, the round table will take place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to commemorate 8 March, International Women’s Day.
The event is expected to be attended by the current president of AMDE and Spanish ambassador to Austria, Cristina Fraile; the deputy political director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Álvaro Ortega; and the deputy director general of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), Mar García Benasach.
Ana Peláez, Vice-President of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and Ana Báez, co-founder of the Association of Women in the Public Sector, will also speak. The debate will be moderated by María Solanas, researcher and Director of Programmes at the Elcano Royal Institute.
In March last year, in an interview in El Periódico, the president of AMDE stated that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a hard core of power that men do not easily share. She also complained that there are no women at the head of the G-7 embassies and there has never been a female ambassador to Paris, London, Washington, the European Union, NATO or the United Nations.
