Within of the activities of the Mutuality Month promoted by the CAM, the Latin American Network of Women in Social and Solidarity Economy was inaugurated on 26 October 2020, with the participation of the International Association of Mutuality (AIM), the International Forum of Social and Solidarity Economy (ESS-IF), the Mutuality Alliance of America (AMA) and the Latin American Confederation of Worker Cooperatives and Mutuals (Colacot).
The objective of the network is to create a space for the exchange of experiences, projects and activities that promote women’s participation and empowerment in order to strengthen social and solidarity economy.
To celebrate this meeting and to lay the foundations for the functioning of the network, the Executive Director and Vice-President for Latin America of AIM, Sibylle Reichert and Elisa Torrenegra, as well as Alejandro Russo, President of CAM, Zaida Chmaruk, Member of the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Associativism and Social Economy of Argentina, Darwin Cerizola, President of AMA and UMU (Uruguayan Mutual Union), Rafael Martínez, representing Colacot and Alcona (National Cooperative Alliance of Mexico), all participated in the event. Women leaders from organizations in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina shared their organizational experiences.
Elisa Torrenegra presented the current situation of women in Colombia, as well as the vulnerability of women in rural areas and the implementation of the Integral Intervention Programme of the Special Administrative Unit of Solidarity Organisations (UAEOS).
Sibylle Reichert presented the experiences of the Mutualist Women’s Day organised by PASS, the “Femmes Prévoyantes Socialistes” of Solidaris (Belgium), the FNMF network MutElles in France, and the Network of Women in Health Leadership in Germany. She stressed that: “As representatives of social protection systems and actors in the social economy, we must ensure that our daughters are even more emancipated than we are. Mutual health insurance and social insurance schemes can help to improve the health of families to ensure access to health care. This will help protect women”.
The need to promote gender equality is shared by all our social and solidarity economy and civil society organisations. The members of the Education and Solidarity Network also want to continue to support gender equality education campaigns and to create spaces for exchange in order to achieve a better representation of women in the bodies of our member organisations.
You can watch the video of the launch of the Latin American Network of Women in Social Solidarity Economy here :
[VIDEO::https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qlzu7KBGgU::normal]
