“IT’S ABOUT TIME! 100 REASONS TO ACT!”
On 7-8 June 2018 the Women Political Leaders (WPL) Summit (https://wplsummit.org/) co-hosted by the Seimas, the Parliament of Lithuania and the Women Political Leaders Global Forum in cooperation with the Council of Women World Leaders, was held in Vilnius.
The WPL Summit was patronized by Her Excellency Dalia Grybauskaitė, the President of the Republic of Lithuania. Dalia Grybauskaitė has been chairing the Council of Women World Leaders (CWWL) since 2014. CWWL unites 69 current and former women prime ministers and presidents.
This year Lithuania is celebrating the Centenary of the Restoration of the State and 100 years of women’s voting rights – a landmark political anniversary.
In her address to the women political leaders, the President Dalia Grybauskaitė urged women leaders to concentrate effort and pursue faster progress in their own countries and at the global scale. The President also encouraged to fight against the stereotypes related to “male” and “female” professions and urged young women to pursue careers in science and innovation. Ways to employ technological progress for enhancing gender equality was one of the key topics of the summit.
The WPL Summit gathered more than 300 female political leaders from over 90 world countries.
EPWS Board of Administration member and BASNET Forumas President Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dalia Satkovskiene was invited to take part in this high level event.
During the Summit, the women leaders discussed different topics concerned with challenges of leadership in the 21st century, including impact of new technologies and digitalization of processes, education, involvement of more women into politics for making more secure, stable, peaceful and healthy societies. The women leaders also met with 50 girls from Lithuania and abroad. The global #Girl2leader initiative (https://www.womenpoliticalleaders.org/girl2leader/ ) taken aims at encouraging young people to be more active in engaging themselves in social activity as well as in pursuing careers in politics.
Events open to the general public were organised in Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania: discussions, a workshop on creative technologies and a viewing of a documentary film “Solidarity According to Women”.
After the conference Dr. D. Satkovskiene said that the invitation of an EPWS BoA member to the WPL Summit shows that EPWS activities and input to the EU gender equality policy are highly rated by world policy makers.
