Women

We support women’s rights

Women are the majority of the world’s population and constitute a fundamental resource in the working world and in the construction of ideas both in society and in the family. Steps forward for the recognition of this role have been huge but pervasive discrimination and patriarchal culture remain at all latitudes of the globe, these are visible in various conditions of exclusion, poverty and war, generating tragic inequalities and negative rights.

Since the 1995 Conference of Peking, women from the southern hemisphere have rejected the idea, which proved unsuccessful, of projects “for women”. These projects considered women as week subjects due to poverty and the processes of “under-development”, but in the end they were criticised for not going into the merits of patriarchal systems and the related policies.

To make a “gender strategy” possible, that creates real change, instead of there being an “organised-women” who takes charge of the question of asymmetry between men and women and who, from her own resources, knowledge and wishes, brings out her point of view, there should be an individual who’s approach is to include other women and negotiate with who has the power, to be able to modify the existing asymmetries, in institutions, education, the economy and in society and the family.

COSPEs commitment is therefore aimed at: strengthening women’s groups and associations and defending their rights; creating exchanges between women from the north and the south, eventually, constructing a gender framework in local development and in the fight against the new poverties; the globalisation of the economy and the structural adjustment policies.