Representative: Prof Dr Dr Bettina Pfleiderer
MWIA past president Bettina Pfleiderer is the current Vice president of the European Women´s Lobby and part of the EWL ExCo. We were able to meet in Brussels (Belgium) for the first time face-to-face (September 22-24, 2021) since being elected in June 2021 (Figure 1). It made such a big difference to not only talk to each other online but face-to-face.
The new EWL Executive committee met for the first time face-to-face in Brussels (Belgium), September 22-24, 2021). MWIA past president Bettina Pfleiderer is the current EWL Vice president (second from left).
One of the highlights in the last 3 months was the participation of EWL at the Generation Equality Forum in Paris to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Beijing declaration globally. The forum was organized by the governments of France and Mexico together with UN Women (https://forum.generationequality.org/home). EWL was a leader of the Action Coalition on Gender-Based Violence (https://womenlobby.org/EWL-is-a-leader-of-the-Action-Coalition-on-Gender-Based-Violence?lang=en)
Sadly, in mid-July EWL´s Secretary General left Joanna Maycock left after 7 years working at the Lobby, fighting with passion and determination to improve the life of women and girl in Europe (https://womenlobby.org/Celebrating-Joanna-Maycock-7-years-as-EWL-Secretary-General?lang=en). EWL just finished interviewing for a new SG. This interim period is a challenge, but everyone in the secretariat and the ExCo is doing its utmost – in a collective effort – to keep EWL and its projects going forward. The new SG will hopefully be on board at the beginning of 2022.
While being in Brussels we discussed how to work with each other in the new Exco, the work plan till the end of the year, and the new strategic framework 2022-2025. Major areas of EWL´s work will continue -among others- to be violence against women and girls in all forms, reshaping Europe after the COVID-10 pandemic and to tackle poverty of women (https://womenlobby.org/Our-work-lang-en?lang=en).