This 29 June 2021, our Executive Director Magdalena Sepúlveda will be participating in the event Beyond COVID-19: A feminist plan for sustainability and social justice, which is part of the Generation Equality Forum (30 June - 02 July 2021) and more broadly of UN Women’s Feminist Plan project. Magdalena will explain GI-ESCR’s work on the links between environmental degradation and women’s rights as well as our alternative approaches regarding renewable energy.

The event aims to gather experts on care, livelihoods, environmental sustainability, macroeconomic policy and feminist politics for an interactive discussion to build a feminist agenda for COVID-19 recovery.

Event’s details

Tuesday 29th June | 14.30-15.45 CEST

This event will be available in English, French and Spanish

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SPEAKERS         

• Mignon Duffy, Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Ofelia Fernández, Member of Buenos Aires City Parliament

• Shalmali Guttal, Executive Director, Focus on the Global South

• Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, Executive Director, Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

• Crystal Simeoni, Founder and Executive Director, NAWI: Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective

The event will be moderated by Laura Turquet, Policy Advisor and Deputy Chief, Research and Data, UN Women.

More information

See the webpage of the publication Beyond COVID-19: The feminist plan for sustainability and social justice on UN Women website.

What is the Feminist Plan?

As policymakers, the UN and civil society respond to the ongoing COVID crisis, to mitigate its health, social and economic impacts, they are also searching for longer-term solutions to ‘build-back better’. In response, UN Women will launch a Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice to influence policy debates on how to shape a more equal and sustainable post-COVID world.

The Plan builds on last year’s ‘Insights to Action’ report on the impacts of COVID-19 from the gender perspective, and on the UN Women/UNDP Global COVID-19 Gender Response Tracker.

The process of compiling the report has been informed by a series of virtual expert group meetings, a series of Feminist Ideas Think Pieces and an expert advisory group. Throughout the process, UN Women has identified opportunities to talk about our ideas for the Plan at events and to consult with hundreds of key partners in policy, civil society and the UN on their visions for feminist COVID recovery.

The final Plan will be launched in September 2021, ahead of the opening of the General Assembly, and will be used as a platform for ongoing UN Women policy influencing and thought leadership for the rest of 2021 and into 2022.

An Issues Brief provides additional, concise information about the Plan.

Key messages of the Feminist Plan

• Women have been at the forefront of the world’s battle against COVID-19, as healthcare workers risking their lives, as scientists developing vaccines at record speed, as carers in families and communities, and as political and public health leaders, steering us through the very worst of times.

• At the same time, the crisis has revealed and worsened the underlying inequalities that continue to shape women’s lives. Women have lost their jobs at a faster rate than men, have taken on more unpaid care work than ever before, and have experienced greater gender-based violence.

• As the world learns to live with COVID-19 and starts to emerge from the crisis, there is a generational opportunity to use the recovery from this crisis to shape a better, more gender equal and sustainable world.

• UN Women’s Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice outlines a vision for a new feminist social contract, one which can support everyone to flourish and ensure the survival of life on our precious planet.

• This Plan will support the ongoing implementation of the Action Coalitions, by identifying the practical steps needed to accelerate progress on gender equality in the post-COVID world, with a focus on:

Ø  Building a caring economy. The world has recognized care work as ‘essential’ in this crisis. Now is the moment to back that recognition with policies to properly support and reward that work.

Ø  Generating sustainable livelihoods for all. The vulnerability of women’s jobs has been brutally revealed during the pandemic. Urgent action is needed to strengthen social protection systems and move women out of the informal economy.

Ø  Ensuring a gender just, green transition. New green jobs for women, and investments in sustainable technology and infrastructure will be critical to ensure environmental sustainability.

• Transformative macroeconomic policies and a new feminist politics will be needed to implement the Plan, which will spell out the financing, partnerships, accountability and metrics needed to ensure gender equality, sustainability and social justice for all.

About the Generation Equality Forum

The Generation Equality Forum is a global gathering for gender equality, convened by UN Women and co-chaired by France and Mexico, in partnership with civil society and youth. The Forum kicked off in Mexico City from 29 - 31 March 2021 and will culminate in Paris from 30 June - 2 July 2021.

A series of Countdown events, including this one, on 28 - 29 June will mark the beginning of the Paris Forum.

Over twenty-five years after the historic Fourth World Conference on Women and the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the Forum is taking stock of progress and driving concrete actions to accelerate progress towards gender equality.

The Forum reaffirms the value of multilateralism and brings together the leadership and participation of various stakeholders - civil society, governments, business, cities, parliaments, trade unions, media and more - focusing on intergenerational and multi-stakeholder partnerships. To drive towards securing transformational commitments for gender equality, the Forum elicits and highlights both a feminist agenda (incubated during the Mexico Forum) and the launch of ‘Action Coalitions’, partnerships for scaled-up and urgent action.

The Generation Equality Forum was launched within the frame of the Beijing +25 review process which took place from March 2019 to September 2020.