On November 21, three well-known international organizations held a seminar on “Women’s Participation and Empowerment in the World.” With the collaboration of Entraide et Fraternité, the MIJARC (International Movement of Catholic Agricultural and Rural Youth), the FIMARC (International Federation of Catholic Rural Adult Movements) and the IYCW (International Young Christian Workers) agreed to organize this seminar, in which young and adult women from countries such as Paraguay, Nicaragua, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Haiti, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic participated.

 The seminar, which was held online, had the important contributions of three participants from Peru, Nicaragua and Paraguay, who explained what it means to be a woman in their countries and described the reality they face in all aspects of their lives.

IYCW News - The Americas YCW (JOCA) organised a virtual exchange on 9 and 16 July 2021. The aim was to share about realities, needs, challenges and actions re unemployment and precarious young workers in the world of work at the continental level.

Participants in the event were young workers, activists and adults from different countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, as well as a young German volunteer in Peru.

“The current global health crisis (Covid-19) has made even more visible the inequalities that we live in our societies; some of us have reinvented ways of work for survival while those who still have a job are submerged in long working hours and faced with double workload. Their salaries are often not enough to cover one or two meals a day plus other fixed costs. In addition, the cost of food, transportation and connectivity has increased,” Ana Cecilia from the Americas YCW team explained.

“I was impressed to see that YCW Nicaragua has a plan about their gender action. It is elaborate, with objectives and everything. It made me wonder why we don’t have such a plan in the Walloon YCW.”

This is a statement from Zoe, a fulltimer in the Walloon YCW, telling other French-speaking comrades about her experience in the Spanish-speaking exchange. When describing her action on gender in the Walloon YCW, she presented a national action group giving space to young women and LGBTQI to act together.

Just like her, other delegates from Gabon, Haiti, Congo Brazzaville, Germany, Ghana, Peru, Indonesia, Wallonia (Belgium) and Nicaragua accepted the IYCW gender commission’s invitation to meet in different spaces organized according to time zones and languages in order to exchange about their actions related to gender. When sharing experiences about gender-based violence and discrimination, it became obvious that existing inequalities increased even more because of the current global pandemic. As Rony from Indonesia reported:

“It is a real challenge that many women in Indonesia do not have any health insurance. This is always bad, but it is a real challenge in such a health crisis. Also, many health workers, who are the front-liners right now in our country, are females.”