Technical Meeting on Women Empowerment
12 December 2024, Athens (Greece) – The UfM Technical Meeting on Women Empowerment provides an expert forum for addressing gender equality in the Euro-Mediterranean region. Grounded in the 5th UfM Ministerial Declaration on Strengthening the Role of Women in Society, adopted in October 2022, this working group aims to gather insights, foster exchange, and build data-driven approaches that support gender equality policies.
The UfMS launched the first-ever Intergovernmental Monitoring Mechanism on Gender Equality in one of the Senior Official Meetings (SOM) of the UfM Member States in 2020. This ongoing reporting exercise allows measuring and reporting of the progress made on women’s rights and providing policy recommendations to close the gender gap in the region. Throughout 2023 and 2024, UfMS has focused on translating the Ministerial Declaration’s commitments into action by elaborating a Roadmap for Implementation 2024-2026. Within this context, online Working Group meetings took place to exchange good practices and capitalize the efforts deployed for the 1st UfM reporting exercise on Gender Equality by assessing how to update the data gathered in 2021 and the most relevant indicators to be covered in the next phase. Furthermore, the High Level Conference on Women for Mediterranean that took place on 30-31 May 2024 in Cyprus discussed the main priorities and recommendations for the Roadmap, summarized in the conference report.
Agenda Highlights:
Five panels will take place throughout the technical meeting to tackle the Roadmap for implementation’s main topics, namely (i) Women Economic Empowerment, (ii) Gender Equality and Climate Change, (iii) Violence Against Women and Girls, and (v) Women, Peace, and Security where Women Leadership and Gender Stereotypes are considered as cross-cutting approache. The meeting will serve as a forum for exchanging lessons learned and good practices, with contributions from country representatives, experts, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), and stakeholders. Beyond the specific presentations by keynote speakers, each panel will facilitate concrete exchanges on the identified topics, making stakeholders’ insights and contributions pivotal to further shaping the draft Roadmap document.
The UfM Technical Meeting on Women Empowerment aims to:
- Collaboratively develop the roadmap draft by integrating insights and input from meeting discussions, ensuring a clear outline of strategic priorities, actionable steps, and key milestones.
- Exchange good practices and experiences in gender equality focus topics
- Discuss current data and identify needs for future Gender Monitoring Mechanism reporting.
