The Diplomat
The headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Madrid, hosted the inauguration of the IX edition of the Ibero-American Women Leaders program, promoted by the Fundación Carolina to promote an Ibero-American network of relevant women in fields as diverse as politics, academia, culture, social and trade union movements and international cooperation.
Under the title Feminist Cooperation: Building Networks for Equality, sixteen women from different Ibero-American countries who have stood out in their respective fields of activity for their work in favor of gender equality will participate in this edition. For five days, they will participate in an agenda of meetings, academic sessions and round table discussions in which they will be able to share experiences and reflections with personalities from the political, academic, economic and social spheres.
The content of the agenda includes five major themes: policies and strategies to combat physical and sexual violence, care as the axis of the new social pact, economic autonomy and labor insertion of women after the pandemic, threats to rights and the construction of “desirable futures with an ecofeminist accent”.
The opening ceremony, last Monday, began with welcoming remarks by the director of the Fundación Carolina, José Antonio Sanahuja, who stressed that “we are at a time when the agendas for the expansion and recognition of women’s rights and gender equality are being questioned by the extreme right-wing forces on the rise”. Therefore, she continued, “part of this equality agenda is to recognize these forces and their strategies, and this is also an agenda of defense and revitalization of democracy”.
For her part, the State Secretary for Foreign and Global Affairs, Ángeles Moreno Bau, affirmed that “the effective participation of women in decision-making processes promotes justice and equality and contributes to the economic, social and political progress of societies.” “We need to seize the opportunity of these programs to build the narrative that gender equality can no longer be a women’s claim; that we need to move forward together men and women because equality benefits all of society,” she added.
