On 9 and 10 November, the Council of Europe Gender Equality Division organised its annual (this year on-line) training session for Gender Equality Rapporteurs (GERs) entitled “Ambassadors for Change: Online Training Course on Gender Equality and Gender Mainstreaming”.

15 GERs from sectors as diverse as media, artificial intelligence, hate speech, anti-doping, national minorities, education and governance participated in the training. The training addressed issues such as how to mainstream intersectionality and women’s rights in their policy work, gender-sensitive communication or how to deal with resistance to gender equality.

Even though this year the training took place, as a virtual training, participants were very active sharing their own experiences and working in virtual small groups to define their own roadmap to include a gender and intersectional perspective in their work.

50 GERs were nominated in the different steering committees and monitoring bodies of the Organisation since 2012. They play a crucial role in being “ambassadors” for gender mainstreaming and gender equality issues in their respective sectors. GERs are an important part of the Council of Europe institutional framework to promote gender mainstreaming in all areas. Thanks to this institutional framework and commitment, the work undertaken on gender mainstreaming at the Council of Europe has had very interesting and pioneering results in many areas. More information here.