The Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM) welcomed the
launch at the UfM Conference Women for the Mediterranean of the UfM
Institutional Ministerial follow-up mechanism and its indicators, adopted this
year by the UfM Member States, that will allow to monitor and measure for the
coming years gender equality progress in the region. In its report adopted in 2018 on women empowerment, ARLEM already acknowledged that the lack of
comprehensive, reliable and regularly updated equality data, segregated by
gender in Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries made not possible to
build up a comprehensive picture of women's condition across the
Euro-Mediterranean Region.
ARLEM hopes that these indicators would help to provide policy and
action-oriented recommendations. As Ms Laia Bonet Rull, Deputy Mayor of
Barcelona and ARLEM member, participating at the UfM
High-Level Conference on Women4Mediterranean which is taking place these
days, stated: "The womenisation of politics will be key to
eradicate inequalities and subjacent conflicts in the Mediterranean. Last year
in a debate on the representation of women in politics of the regions, the
ARLEM members concluded that quotas, mentoring, political-party funding and the
broader objective of equity need to be considered in efforts to increase the
representation of women in politics in the Mediterranean region."
ARLEM works in this field -which include the ARLEM award,
an award for young local entrepreneurship in the Mediterranean that has a focus
on women and their participation to take into account social development-
reflects the centrality of gender equality and social inclusion in the agendas
of the European Union and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.