COP26 Gender Day

After attending the Commission on the Status of Women as a UN Women UK delegate I now get invited to attend other events and conferences, most recently the gender day at COP26. I could have attended either in person or online, but in the interest of saving the planet - zoom felt like the right decision. Boris did offer to pick me up in his jet on the way, but it just didn’t feel right.

We had no idea what to expect, apart from knowing we would be hearing from a lineup of speakers and would be split into groups as usual at the end of the event to provide thoughts, advice and feedback to the UN Women team. 

So this is what went down:

Claire Bennett (Executive Director of UN Women UK) opened and introduced the first speaker - Nina Gualinga, Ecuadorian environmental and indigenous rights activist. This was the most moving of all speeches and she spoke in the main about gender violence, extractivism and of course climate change.

Then we heard from Theresa May, who said we all need to work together - she’s not wrong!

Then Charlotte (trying to find her surname) from B-Lab, who spoke about how they're reinventing capitalism and how companies can pass the mic to activists. This was of particular interest and she provided a resource that I think every business owner should have a read of - no matter how small or large your operation is, we all have a part to play. Especially when we grow!

Download The Climate Justice Playbook for Business

Salina Sanar - Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, spoke on education for girls and holding governments to account.

Louisa Mabulo - founder of Cacao Company and climate change activist (she's 23!) and is changing the world.

Princess Esmerelda of Belgium - made me want to move to Belgium. She said women aren’t afraid to talk about love, how our power to feel empathy will change the world. She also spoke a bit about how it’s not good enough to just be anti-climate change, we must stand up and take action in order for things to change.

Dr Jane Goodall (below) joined us virtually (!!). She continued the theme of love and empathy, one of my favourite quotes from her was ‘head and heart must work together.

After all, the people who care are the ones who will make changes. Those who don’t won’t push for action. 

Then after we heard from all of the speakers we joined our breakout groups and discussed two topics:

- What is one thing that gives you hope?

- What is one thing that you think urgently needs to change about climate action today 

Our groups joined together to gather our thoughts, suggestions and advice, this was collected on a miro board and fed back to the UN Women UK team. They then use this to develop their campaigns and as part of their reports.

You can see a few snippets from our team below - I would love to know what you think too. 

Oh and we need a Gender Day at COP26 because we need to put power back into the hands of women and girls, so that our voices are more loudly heard.