session 2

such as women in geosciences, gender relations in water management decision making, geo conservation and tourism, empowering people for living tourism, sanitation, participatory planning and management of water resources in urban centers. She shared some of the publications and courses offered by the Chair, on environmental socioeconomic sustainability, experience of women from geosciences in the job market and courses such as craft soap manufacturing for the protection of water resources and assistance in combating Covid-19, for the Latin American community, with the support from UNESCO and IHP-LAC.

Prof. Boshra Mossad Awad, UNESCO Chair through Empowerment of Women in Science and Technology, Egypt, focused on successful ways to empower women through science and technology during the Covid-19 pandemic. She presented a number of initiatives developed during the lockdown, including projects to reach out to girls staying at home, establishing good quality online learning platforms and distributing free electronic devices and learning materials. Her work has benefited communities in rural Egypt, moving from eLearning to mobile learning. For women’s capacity building, compulsory courses have been introduced in faculty programs, already showing positive results on girls and society.

“My recommendation is to develop a website for networking between the gender-related UNESCO Chairs, for fruitful, borderless collaboration, and exchange experiences, visions, unite voices, and spark momentum for addressing challenges, and for building the most bright future for all women across the globe. I appreciate this Summit very much. It is very promising and we hope to do brighter work together for women, hand in hand, crossing all boundaries and challenges”.

Dr. Fotini Bellou, UNESCO Chair women, peace and security Building Capacity and Resilience through Education and Research, Greece, focuses on policy agenda related to women peace and security. Her Chair’s objectives include: empowerment and protection of women throughout the spectrum of policies related to crisis management and conflict resolution; promotion of a comprehensive system of research education knowledge and documentation on Women, Peace and Security; cooperation at national and international levels, and establishing an interdisciplinary hub for collaborative research. She emphasized how Covid-19 has unveiled the need for accelerating our efforts and how we should exploit and capitalize on the issues and the collaboration that the pandemic has generated. She also introduced major events, activities and collaborations of her Chair.

“Our suggestions and vision out of this conference is to launch collaboration schemes to promote research on different kind of areas; promote advocacy for increasing the role of women in International Organizations; make the gender network visible - Covid-19 has made us think wider and in a more inclusive fashion, for these reasons, it has brought an upheaval in international relations and we are open to new ideas. For this reason, making this network visible as well as the UNESCO global network on gender equality more visible to our societies is needed although a very challenging issue”.

session 2

Dr. Barbara Pozzo presented the work of the UNESCO Chair in Italy, focusing on Gender Equality and Women’s Rights in the Multicultural Society. One of the objectives of the Chair is to develop and improve knowledge and awareness of women’s rights in Italy; remove gender biases in the broader context of multicultural society, which are often based on lack of knowledge and preparation from a historical cultural point of view. The activities conducted include law courses on the evolution of women’s rights in a comparative, historical and anthropological perspective, seminars and conferences in collaboration with PhD in law and social sciences, with a focus on sexual harassment in the workplace, stereotypes in advertising, projects with and for women in jail and women migrants in shelters, and national and international collaborations, including with the Global Network of UNESCO Chairs in higher education. She concluded by emphasizing the need to develop an awareness raising process

for students, post graduates and opening doors of universities to public institutions and local communities in order to make people understand there is a lot to do and still a long path to go.

From Japan, Dr. Roni Alexander presented the UNESCO Chair in Gender and Vulnerability in Disaster Risk Reduction Support, Kobe University, created after the large earthquake of 1995 in Kobe. Dr. Alexander acknowledged the challenges in making people understand the importance of gender equality and its relevance in disasters. She presented the many partnerships established with institutions and NGOs in Asia. The tasks of the Chair include research, including with partners, developing gender sensitive and inclusive guidelines for disaster risk reduction, awareness strategy implementation on training for students, professional, policy makers, establish guidelines and policy recommendations, build international DRR network based on gender equality and social inclusion, with a recent focus on inequalities related to Covid. Dr. Alexander shared the main successes of the Chair, including education and research programs. For the future, the activities of the Chair include adding emphasis on wellbeing to gender and vulnerability, to conduct collective study on Covid-19 from a gender sensitive perspective focusing on vulnerability and wellbeing, building new research structure and finding new affiliates and partners.

“Like to echo the comments of those before me - this is a special and important opportunity and thank you for the chance to be here and hear what you’re doing and connect with you in different ways”.

Dr. Chang, UNESCO Chair in Communication Technology for Women has been established within Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, which is Korea’s first and only university for women founded in 1906. To promote women’s leadership, Sookmyung offers an extensive portfolio for entrepreneurship and start-up experiences for all students,with economic and social values. She has identified ICT and leadership as key areas - Opened the Asia Pacific Women’s Information Network Center (APWINC) to promote women’s empowerment and gender equality through ICT education. The University is UNESCO Chair in Communication Technology for Women since 1998, but also UNESCO-UNITWIN Host Univs for WE through ICT and Leadership Education since 2005. She presented the major partner universities from Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and Vietnam. She concluded her presentation with a focus on Covid-19: before, training was face to face on leadership and ICT education - including an intensive workshop and international competition at Sookmyung university. She presented the recent challenges related to Covid-19 but also the successful adaptations through online training.

“The Covid-19 pandemic made us face many challenges, however we worked together, and as we collaborate, we hope to continue to bring success on this journey to further enrich the quality of life of women and collective society”.

Dr. Marlene Temmerman, UNESCO Chair Youth Leadership in Science, Health, Gender and Education, Kenya, has been involved throughout her career in gender-based violence, as an obstetrician-gynecologist with training in public health and health diplomacy, also carrying key political functions, including elected senator in Belgium and WHO Director in Geneva, Reproductive Health and Research. The objectives of her Chair is the empowerment of young women and men, girls and boys, to endorse gender equality in education - to train, mentor and prepare them to become resilient leaders and force positive change in their societies; health - to enable them to exercise their right to accurate information and affordable services related to health; gender - to empower youth in east Africa to endorse gender equality and culture-sensitivity in national policies and daily practices; science - to address priority research issues of relevance to youth in East Africa by jointly conducting interdisciplinary and innovation-oriented research related to health, education and gender. She presented several action plans, including programs for youth and maternity care, collaboration with the UN on Gender Agenda, community outreach, eHealth and eLearning, gender based violence and recovery center, recent publications, and Covid-19 activities leading to an increase in Gender-based violence.

“I’m so happy to be here in this meeting and I just want to echo my colleagues that I’m enjoying this conference and I really hope that we’ll be able to network and develop some joint activities”.

Dr. Winnie V. Mitullah, University of Nairobi, Kenya, UNESCO Chair of Women and Community Participation, presented the multidisciplinary and cross cutting approach of her Chair. Its thematic areas include women and youth, education, community health, sustainable development. Her mission is to find ways to engage communities and to work with them in promoting sustainable development, so that communities can take ownership and their destiny in their hands. The mandate of the Chair is to harmonize and bridge the gap between universities and communities to promote sustainable development and reach women in rural areas, through research and innovations, training, and capacity building. Flagship programs include water harvesting for sustainability livelihoods, food security with a focus on women; knowledge construction/ generation and providing information to women on the new Kenyan Constitution of 2010. In response to Covid, Dr. Mitullah ran a program called “Keep Hope Alive”, for which the guiding principle was the “Power of Positivity.” The intervention encouraged youth to provide leadership, knowledge, innovation and new energy in assisting individuals, communities and the country. Future projects could focus on increasing inclusion in higher education, building resilience of women and youth, and digital learning.

“I was really impressed with Amrita University’s presentation that is doing so much, dealing with resilience but working on so many projects - almost 150 projects. I think that’s really what we need. Because many times when we have projects like the kind I’m talking about, they’re just a drop in the ocean. But today, we had a presentation where a university is doing so much in terms of supporting communities, which I really think is the way to go...I think this forum is very good - where we listen to others, and learn where support exists in terms of knowledge. Why go for new knowledge when people have done it so successfully. So we will be linking up through this network to share knowledge and use some of the good lessons in our country”.

Dr. Patricia Ruiz Bravo, UNESCO Chair in Gender Equality in Higher Education Institutions at the Pontifical Catholic Academy of Peru - represented by Aranxa Pirazzo, explained that the Chair’s research team is part of the Gender Studies Research Group, an interdisciplinary group focusing in gender and equality issues. Their goal is to develop a space for academic exchange that promotes research, teaching and participation in policy debates and advocacy for change in situations of inequality. Its mission include to research women's situation in higher education in Peru, raise awareness among the university’s community and other HEI nationwide on gender inequalities and violence, promote development of institutional policies that foster more equitable inclusive academic spaces, and establish cooperative networks with national and international universities to promote academic exchange in order to question gender inequalities and achieve more democratic and inclusive institutions. She emphasized that gender inequalities work in different ways in different countries, so it is important to promote international dialogues. She then presented several areas of research, awareness raising, equality policies and publications.

“The more we know about what happens somewhere else, the more we will understand what happens here to fight Gender inequality and violence. This is an incredible opportunity to meet all of us. I hope we can have this meeting again in the future again.”

Dr. Renata Siemienska’s UNESCO Chair in Women, Society and Development, Poland, was established in 1996 prior to which Dr. Renata was working for the UN, UNESCO and the European Commission. The Chair has been working for many years in teaching, research and dissemination of knowledge in the field of interdisciplinary studies and women’s situations in the context of political, economic and social situations in the country. Another goal of the Chair is dissemination of knowledge, building contact with NGOs, media and politicians. She shared

that if one wants to influence, to some extent, the situation of the country, contact with these stakeholders is necessary, so as not to remain within the framework of the university. The Chair takes part in public discourse on women’s situation and men’s role in society, acknowledging that young people are social capital, who can influence the condition of women and men in society. Some of the classes that are organized by the Chair include sociology of gender, women and men in grassroots initiatives, and gender and age effects on market communication. Prominent research areas include: analyzing the context for increase of women in education, women and men in industrialized countries, for which a book has been published, already acclaimed, and the role of women’s organization in civil society, labor market, academics, etc. She concluded by presenting some challenges to tackle, including the fact that many young women scientists are leaving Poland to go to the UK and US, and the under-representation of women in hard sciences.

Dr. Hülya Şimga, UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality and Culture, Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey, started by stressing how timely and urgent such a gathering was. She presented the gender equality context in Turkey, mentioning the recent withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and the fact that Turkey has been going towards more conservatism, with a strong anti-gender movement. She explained that politically, the situation was problematic, and that the culture was not always very positive. This is the reason why the Chair focuses on gender based problems and culture. The Center for Women and Family Studies was established at the same time of the Chair, and they are now working on establishing a Center for Elimination of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Abuse. Major activities undertaken so far include the translation of the UNESCO and Equal Skill Coalition Report, “I’d Blush if I Could”, holding international conferences, book publications, qualitative research on the impact of Covid-19, financial literacy education for women, including women refugees, and interview series on promoting Gender Equality through webinars and workshops. As part of the upcoming events, a conference will be held in October 2021 on family in the age of globalization through interdisciplinary approaches. Given the turbulent climate in Turkey, the overall focus is to come up with effective and immediate strategies in enhancing women’s lives and their capacities.

“We do and also plan to develop a national and international basis - but also work alongside other UNESCO chairs - hence, this is a great opportunity to get to know one another.”

Dr. Rose-Michelle Smith, UNESCO Chair on Women and Science for Development, Haiti, is the newest member of the UNESCO Chairs on Gender Equality, having started the Chair in June. She started her presentation by explaining the place of women in the Haitian society from engineering, vocational and informal trades. The primary goal of the Chair is to increase the presence of women in scientific fields (STEM) through systematic campaigns. Her strategy is based on 4 pillars: management, capacity building, durability and knowledge transfer. She then presented planned activities of the UNESCO Chair, including granting scholarships in science to increase women enrollment in STEM in universities, organizing award prizes to women who excel in STEM, to increase national visibility of women scientists, publication of articles on the achievements of women scientists and Financial support for women’s publications, to increase in the number of publications by women in STEM, organization of international seminars and conferences, internships for Haitian women researchers abroad and publication of collective work “Women and Sciences” , to increase social acceptability of women in STEM and increase regional visibility of national Haitian scientists.

Dr. Euphrasie Hortense Yao Kouassi, University of Cocody, CIRES, Ivory Coast, UNESCO Chair on "Water, Women and power to make decisions”, attended the event, but could not present due to some technical issues.

In addition to the presentations by each UNESCO Chair, Q&A sessions were conducted to interact with participants and the wider public attending the event.