The 14th Equal Pay Day conference - organised by the non-profit organisation Business and Professional Women CR (BPWCR) in Prague on 31 March-2 April - brought together around 30 speakers, 80 mentors and 600 attendees to debate new trends in women's entrepreneurship and equal opportunities as well as to promote networking opportunities and experience sharing.
Major topics relevant to society were discussed with the view that equal opportunities bring economic growth, strengthen democracy and raise welfare of the entire society.
Thanks to the CEI's support, the Equal Pay Day going International! project was promoted within the conference involving 20 professional women from nine CEI countries, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Poland, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine, in addition to those from the host country (the Czech Republic) and worldwide. The participation of Ukrainian experts enriched the discussion where the often-unexploited potential of migrant women was highlighted with examples and personal stories.
The conference included a plenary session and a number of focused mentoring sessions in line with the idea of promoting the UN Women's Empowering Principles, especially the promotion of "role models" – namely, successful women who can become models for less experienced participants and can transfer their experience and recommendations for their own professional and personal development.
CEI Senior Executive Officer Barbara Fabro took part in the conference where she had the chance to do networking with professional women from the CEI region especially in view of developing future actions in support of gender equality, in line with the objectives of the CEI Plan of Action 2012-2023.
CEI Plan of Action 2021-2023: “the CEI recognises that regional sustainable development requires gender equality through the strengthening of women’s leadership and political participation in all levels of a policy-making process – local, national, regional and global, by removing barriers for equal participation and ensuring women’s fair access to all political spheres. Thus, the CEI will promote activities to remove all kinds of discriminatory provisions and growing inequalities, favouring gender equality and enhancing the participation of vulnerable groups in the public life”.
For more info: fabro@cei.int
