The forum served as a pre-event for the first Encuentro Hacia un Movimiento Pedagógico Latinoamericano (Meeting Towards a Latin American Educational Movement) held in Bogota from 5-7 December. This pre-event enabled participants to include a discussion on women education workers and their views on the educational movement in the agenda of the overall meeting.

The EI Latin America Women’s Network has put forward “education for equality” as an education policy proposal with a focus on gender equality in education, as well as in society in general. 

Participants included representatives from EI’s affiliate in Colombia, FECODE, host organisation of the meeting, and trade unions from throughout Latin America as well representatives of the international trade unions FETE-UGT (Spain), UEN (Norway) and Lararforbundet (Sweden).

FECODE former president and current senator in Colombia, Gloria Ramírez, stated that the presence of women in public life “introduces topics in the debate on human rights that were previously kept in the private and subjective sphere,” and singled out, by way of example, violence, access to knowledge, reproductive rights and equal property rights.

Vice-Presidents of the EI Regional Committee in Latin American, Brígida Rivera and Fátima Da Silva, also attended the event. Rivera stressed that the network is ready to chart trade union strategies for gender equality and to defend public education to help building such equality. Besides, Da Silva pointed out that this is an opportunity for positive exchanges in the region, one that should be harnessed to advocate education and equality.

To see the picture gallery of the event please click here.