On Friday, October 24, Fundación Promoción Social held the event “Empowering Women and Girls: 30 Years Promoting Equality”, to commemorate the Fourth World Conference on Women, which took place in Beijing in 1995 and in which the Foundation also participated.
The event brought together representatives from the Foundation, the Community of Madrid (which supported the event), and several speakers who also took part in the Beijing Conference. Among them were María de la Macarena Gamir, Deputy Director General for Women at the Department of Family, Youth and Social Affairs of the Community of Madrid; Ignacio Ayres, Director General for Social Services and Integration of the same department; Paloma Durán, Associate Professor at IE University and United Nations consultant; and Juana Borrego, President of the Spanish Federation of Rural Women (FEMUR).
The Beijing Experience
Macarena Cotelo, Project Director at Fundación Promoción Social, shared her experience attending the Beijing Conference in 1995. “At that time, we were taking our first steps in the field of international development cooperation, with a few rural development projects in Lebanon and Peru that allowed us to understand first-hand the situation of women in those countries,” she explained.
She also recalled that, from the very beginning, the Foundation’s leadership clearly recognized the “urgent” need to “promote reflections grounded in reality and provide solutions to the real needs of women around the world, paying attention to the specificities of each situation and working to include women themselves in the decision-making processes that affect them — which, ultimately, are all of them.”
In this spirit, Fundación Promoción Social actively participated in the preparatory stages of the Fourth World Conference by attending international meetings, raising awareness about the importance of the event, disseminating its contents, and encouraging other NGOs to take part. A significant example of this preparatory work was the publication of around 30 articles in various media outlets at the time, aimed at promoting awareness of this global summit on women, as well as the organization or participation in about 20 events, seminars, and radio interviews throughout 1995.
Following the Beijing Conference, Cotelo explained that the experience marked a turning point in the Foundation’s development cooperation work, setting a clear priority on improving women’s living conditions through education, vocational training, and access to economic resources. Moreover, this milestone laid the groundwork for other major achievements, such as obtaining General Consultative Status with the United Nations in 2004 and signing a formal partnership agreement with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 2012.
The Key Role of Women in Development Cooperation
During the event, Gema Talaván, Project Officer at Fundación Promoción Social, also presented an overview of the impact that international development cooperation projects have had on the lives of so many women and girls around the world. She introduced a new publication that compiles the Foundation’s experience through the implementation of key projects in countries such as Jordan, Guatemala, Ethiopia, India, and Palestine, carried out with the support of institutions such as the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), Madrid City Council, and the Community of Madrid.
Participants at the event received a copy of this publication, which provides detailed information, positive impacts, and lessons learned from the implementation of each of these projects.
Talaván also summarized “the main lessons we have learned while working on these projects.” First, she acknowledged that women’s leadership and participation are key to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the achievements made through development cooperation projects, since “they are agents of change in their communities.” In this regard, she highlighted the importance of “incorporating an approach that addresses the structural barriers limiting women’s economic autonomy,” as well as “ensuring transparency and their participation in decision-making processes in order to achieve genuine equity in access to opportunities.”
Finally, Gema Talaván emphasized the importance of building horizontal partnerships and support networks — bringing together community leaders, government institutions, and the private sector — to foster structural changes towards gender equality in these countries.