Women20 – Digital Leadership Institute

27 January 202414 March 2025

W20 Series: Digital Equity for Women’s Economic Agency in the EU – Volume 2

A Successful Footprint for Increasing Digital Skills and Tech Entrepreneurship Among Women

By Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, Head of W20 EU Delegation

(Originally published on the Sasakawa Peace Foundation website in English and Japanese)

W20 Series – Special Feature on Digital and Reskilling
The G20’s official engagement group Women 20 (W20) has identified the gender digital divide as one of its key challenges and has included it in its policy recommendations to G20 countries. While there are concerns that the accelerating pace of technological advancement in recent years will further widen the gender digital divide, initiatives to close the gender digital divide have started around the world by utilizing digital technologies and reskilling. As a spin-off of the feature articles of W20 Series which introduce works and activities of the W20 and its delegates, this series will showcase the case studies of empowering women through digital technologies and reskilling women in the G20 countries.
(W20 India Website: https://w20india.org/)

Following on from the previous article, “W20 Series: Digital Equity for Women’s Economic Agency in the European Union Vol. 1“, this article introduces specific initiatives being organised in the European Union to improve women’s digital skills.

The Digital Leadership Institute, a Brussels-based nonprofit I founded in 2014 with the mission of promoting inclusive digital transformation, has benefitted from such EU funding schemes in order to deliver innovative and award-winning programs that increase participation of girls and women in “ESTEAM”—or “entrepreneurship and arts powered by STEM”—and that contribute to women’s economic agency as professionals, entrepreneurs and leaders across the board.

We4Change aims to connect girls and women for environemntal change with digital and innovation (Source: DLI)Over the past ten years, DLI programs have positively impacted tens of thousands of girls and women across Europe and beyond, and have advanced the state of the art for practices that are successful at promoting digital entrepreneurship and leadership by women, many that DLI was first to identify. These initiatives include the Ada Awards, international awards recognising outstanding girls and women in digital research and careers and their supporting people and organisations; We4Change, a project that aims to contribute to the EU Youth Strategy by empowering young girls and women with digital and innovation skills, to have an active role in addressing the challenges posed by climate change; inQube, a global network promoting women-led, digitally-driven and digitally-enabled enterprises with the “Move It Forward” flagship female digital starter events; Digital Muse, a European network promoting ‘STEM-powered entrepreneurship and the arts’ for girls (Digital Muse); Digital Brusselles, Europe’s first female tech incubator; and Cypro, a cyber professional training and career placement program for women. Of those noted, Move It Forward and Cypro especially embody best practices to attract girls and women to digital fields.

Move It Forward (MIF) supports female entrepreneurs (Source: DLI)Move It Forward (“MIF”) is the flagship event of DLI’s inQube platform promoting women tech starters. It is a two-day project-driven entrepreneurship event for teen and adult women of all skill levels with the aim of supporting them to become technology entrepreneurs. MIF provides beneficiaries the mission, tools, community, resources and know-how to deliver tech and tech-enabled solutions for challenges that disproportionately impact girls and women and their communities. Each MIF event includes digital skills trainings, project work and pitching, networking with community members and partners, and recognition and awards that take the form of mentorship and long-term support for projects launched.

In 2020, Move It Forward was the subject of a European Commission-funded program that also delivered an open-source “MIF+ Toolkit” in order to permit other organisations around the world to benefit from the approach, materials and best-practices assembled over a decade of successfully deploying the MIF initiative. By 2023, Move It Forward had been delivered in twenty-five countries, reaching over twelve-hundred participants and launching more than two hundred women-led tech startups, about fifty of which are ongoing.

Cypro Nurtures Professional Women in IT　(Source: DLI)In addition, in 2017, DLI piloted the Cypro (“Cyber Professional”) training and career placement program whose mission is to educate and matriculate women with five or more years of non-technical work experience into expert roles within IT organisations. After completing a preliminary training period, Cypro beneficiaries join a company as paid IT associates through an on-the-job training/apprenticeship program that lasts up to three years. During this time, participants also spend a percentage of their workweek pursuing IT certification programs through DLI and its partners, AWS, Cisco, Oracle et al., in emerging technology fields that align with their job role, including software development, cybersecurity, cloud computing, IoT, big data, machine learning, AI, etc. Over the course of the Cypro program, DLI also delivers mentorship and community activities for beneficiaries, as well as staffing, evaluation, advancement and DEI support toward client IT organisations.

In its first year, ninety women of diverse backgrounds took part in the Brussels Cypro pilot and completed a Cisco IT Fundamentals bootcamp and AWS Associate trainings. Half were awarded IT certifications, twenty-five percent became Trainer certified, and to date, five percent have become full-time employed with IT organisations. During Covid, Cypro was put on hold and is now being relaunched in collaboration with Amazon Web Services as an official part of their European re/Start program.

Initiatives like Move It Forward and Cypro are successful because they embody best practices to attract and retain girls and women in technology fields. Like all DLI programs, MIF and Cypro explicitly target girls and women as beneficiaries, addressing an underlying negative attitude girls and women sometimes harbour toward STEM, especially Technology, and entrepreneurship. These programs also deliver gender-responsive digital skills trainings, meaning that program design and delivery address factors that specifically ensure success for girl and women program participants. In addition, Cypro delivers skills in deep and emerging tech fields, while MIF teaches key digital skills that are usable in startup and workplace environments.

Move It Forward Team-building (Source: DLI)

Gathering at Digital Muse Event (Source: DLI)

For long-term sustainability, we focus on building community around all DLI activities, which is perhaps the single-most important factor in achieving a more inclusive digital transformation over the long-term. MIF and Cypro also focus on providing access to mentorship and resources, including financing and startup advice, which connects program participants to a larger ecosystem. Finally, a major barrier to women making the transition into tech fields is that they cannot necessarily undertake effort that either involves a financial outlay and/or represents unpaid work—thus reflecting in their lower participation in tech bootcamps, startup weekends, skills trainings, etc. DLI programs therefore offer scholarships to participants, prioritise remunerated training and apprenticeship opportunities, and support job placement and/or business launch and scaling in order to shorten the path toward financial independence for program participants. This also represents a critical success factor in getting women into and keeping them in technology fields.

Unfortunately, work like the foregoing is difficult and successes far too few. Despite an increase in European programs that support work that tackles underrepresentation of girls and women in STEM at ecosystem, capacity-building and grass roots levels, negative trends have not reversed over the past decade. DLI’s own successes especially have been limited, most notably by a lack of sustained funding to support continued effort on our critical path, and by an inability for us to scale successes across broader geographies. In the case of Cypro, the very barriers to entry that keep women out of the tech sector are also those that DLI has encountered in sustaining the program and followup action to ensure participant success.

Replicating and scaling innovative initiatives, like those that DLI leads, is not an unusual challenge in Europe, a geography of 550 million people speaking dozens of languages across almost thirty sovereign countries. At the same time, a persistent lack of funding for programs promoting gender equity, including in STEM, is a symptom of institutionalised discrimination across all fields that also manifests as a lack of policy priority-setting on such issues. Public sector leadership in this context is critical, however, because it also stimulates private sector uptake of approaches to promote gender parity, and thereby engenders a virtuous circle of action tackling problems like the gender digital divide.

Gender digital divide addressed at W20 summit (Source: W20 India)

In her 2023 State of the European Union speech, European Commission President Von der Leyen highlighted EU policies that support greater participation of girls and women in STEM sectors, especially tech, which include broad-sweeping digital skilling, some that targeted underserved demographics, as well as programs promoting women entrepreneurs.

These actions, along with global leadership like the W20’a ongoing work to close the Digital Gender Divide and recent W20 India breakthrough to institutionalise a Women’s Empowerment Working Group at the G20 level, give us room to be optimistic about what the future will bring on this critical subject.

Author’s Profile

Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck is Director of the Brussels-based Digital Leadership Institute, Head of EU Delegation to the G20 Women20, and Chair of the Education, Skills Development and Labour Force Participation Task Force, 2023 G20 India Women20.

15 January 202414 March 2025

W20 Series: Digital Equity for Women’s Economic Agency in the EU – Volume 1

Lessons from the EU on Closing the Digital Gender Divide

By Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, Head of W20 EU Delegation

(Originally published on the Sasakawa Peace Foundation website in English and Japanese)

W20 Series – Special Feature on Digital and Reskilling
The G20’s official engagement group Women 20 (W20) has identified the gender digital divide as one of its key challenges and has included it in its policy recommendations to G20 countries. While there are concerns that the accelerating pace of technological advancement in recent years will further widen the gender digital divide, initiatives to close the gender digital divide have started around the world by utilizing digital technologies and reskilling. As a spin-off of the feature articles of W20 Series which introduce works and activities of the W20 and its delegates, this series will showcase the case studies of empowering women through digital technologies and reskilling women in the G20 countries.
(W20 India Website: https://w20india.org/)

In this article, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, Head of W20 EU Delegation and Director of the Brussels-based Digital Leadership Institute that promotes women’s empowerment using digital technologies, will introduce EU initiatives in two parts. In Vol. 1, the importance of bridging the digital divide and the EU government policies are discussed, which is followed by Vol. 2, which will feature the specific initiatives for digital reskilling being conducted in the EU.

The Worldwide Phenomenon of Digital Disruption

Anywhere in the world today, a woman is:
• Less likely to be online;
• More likely to have low or no digital skills;
• Much less likely to be an IT professional; and
• Far less likely to launch a technology-driven startup.

As a result of the foregoing, women are at greater risk of being excluded by the digital disruption that has transformed society—a situation exacerbated by climate change, pandemics, geopolitical disruption, and economic uncertainty. This reality poses a great risk to women’s financial independence, economic resilience more generally, and to sustainable development.

Percentage of female and male population using the Internet, 2020 (Source: ITU)

A key characteristic of the digital disruption which cuts across geographic locations and socio-economic conditions is that, no matter where she is in the world, a woman is less likely to be online than a man. Of the Earth’s 7.8 billion human population as of 2020, women make up fifty-seven percent and men sixty-two percent of people who are online, reflecting 234 million fewer women online overall. Despite a surge in online participation during the COVID pandemic, the rate at which women go online continues to lag behind. This ubiquitous and persistent trend represents the digital divide compounded by the gender gap which, without focused effort to address it, risks deepening. This global phenomenon is recognised as the gender digital divide.

In countries where digitalisation has a firmer hold, women are still less likely to have digital skills, take up formal computer science and other STEM studies, or hold technical and leadership roles in IT organizations. Globally, the founder of a technology-driven enterprise is five times more likely to be a man than a woman, and in many places, the ratio is closer to ten-to-one. In addition to the yawing social divide this reality reflects, it also represents a loss for the global economy and for women themselves who are unable to fully realise their potential as economic agents in an increasingly digital society.

The UN reported that bringing women and girls online could boost global GDP. (Source: ITU)

In 2013, the UN reported that bringing 600 million women and girls online could boost global GDP by up to $18B. A European study in 2018 suggests that greater participation of women in the ICT sector would contribute as much as €16B annually to the European economy alone. Especially as a response to the COVID-induced “She-cession,” action to tackle the gender digital divide presents an opportunity to improve women’s economic agency, address the digital skills and job gap, and promote sustainable development.

As a path out of economic adversity, women everywhere turn to entrepreneurship, making women-led enterprise one of the most dynamic facets of the global economy, although it is not a consistent policy priority. GEM research in 2019 indicates that $5T would be added to the world’s economy if women participated in entrepreneurship at the same rate as men. The COVID pandemic disproportionately impacted women—forcing millions out of the workplace, many permanently. In response, entrepreneurship is and will continue to be a key factor in sustaining financial independence for women and supporting economic recovery.

In the digital society, economic participation is increasingly linked to skills that support both digitally-enabled and digitally-driven entrepreneurship, where women face a de facto disadvantage in both areas. A lack of digital skills to build, launch and manage enterprises, including in online marketplaces and supply chains, creates a persistent barrier to entry for women seeking to participate as entrepreneurs in the digital economy. A lack of specialised digital skills, including as experts in academia and industry, further limits the ability of women to contribute as innovators, researchers, entrepreneurs and leaders in the digital society. The uptake of artificial intelligence, and the inherent risk it poses to intensifying social inequities, can further amplify this problem.

The Policy and Measures of the EU to Bridge the Digital Gap

On March 5, 2020, Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman President of the European Commission, launched the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025 whose key objectives include closing gender gaps in the labour market and achieving equal participation between women and men across all sectors of the economy. In January 2023, the Digital Decade for Europe 2030 policy went into force which explicitly aims to close the gender gap among IT specialists as a key driver for achieving the twin digital and green transitions in Europe.

President Ursula von der Leyen launced the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025. (Source: The European Union)

Increasing participation of women in digital fields is thus prioritised as a contributor to achieving the European Green Deal which, among other things, aims to make Europe a net-zero emitter of greenhouse gases by 2050. This priority has also set off a cascading set of programming and policy actions in Europe to tackle inequalities related to skills, care and other issues that might otherwise constrain women from enjoying full economic agency and fairly contributing to the digital society.

In this context, during her recently concluded mission as EU Commissioner for Research, Mariya Gabriel instituted several ground-breaking changes to the €95.5B Horizon Europe funding scheme which aim to increase gender equality across the European Research Area (ERA), and thus in STEM fields and startup. These include a focus on gender balance among Horizon Europe research program evaluators, advisory bodies and researchers; and targets for women-led companies and advisory structures within entrepreneurship programs, a dedicated initiative to support women-led startups, and a women innovators prize.

EU Commissioner for Research, Mariya Gabriel initiated to increase gender equality across the European Research Area. (Source: The European Union)

Leadership like the foregoing is essential to achieving digital equity and improved economic agency for women in Europe because EU multi-annual financial framework (MFF) funding schemes, like Horizon Europe, underwrite countless EU member state activities that contribute to increased participation of women in STEM and startup. MFF and other funding programs such as ERASMUS+, which specifically supports the European entrepreneurship ecosystem, contribute critical funding for EU civil society-led digital skills and startup programs, many of which aim to increase gender equality in technology fields, including entrepreneurship.

All together, the policy, funding and program-delivery ecosystem in the European Union has become increasingly successful at programming like the foregoing which promotes digital equity for women’s economic agency, contributes to financial independence for women, and makes inroads on the sustainable development goals and other global challenges. This approach deserves replication, all or in part, because it contributes to:

• Reducing the risk of marginalisation posed to women by digital disruption;

• Addressing the global digital skills and job gaps;

• Supporting a pathway to increased workforce participation and entrepreneurship by women;

• Harnessing the creative capacity of women for sustainable economic development; and

• Promoting women’s full economic, social and political agency.

In the following article, “W20 Series: Digital Equity for Women’s Economic Agency in the European Union Vol. 2” will feature the specific initiatives of digital reskilling in the EU.

Author’s Profile

18 December 202314 March 2025

DLI Update – Fall 2023

The Digital Leadership Institute Team is actively involved in outreach activities with partners and stakeholders around the world that promote ESTEAM* leadership by girls and women. Below are outreach activities in which DLI was involved in Fall 2023.

*Entrepreneurship and Art powered by Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

15 June 2023 – G20 Women20 India 2023 Summit (Mahabalipuram, India): On 15 June 2023 in Mahabalipuran, India, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined the final meeting of the G20 Women20 India 2023 Presidency in her joint capacities as Co-HOD of the EU Delegation and Chair of the W20 India Skills Development, Education and Labour Force Participation Task Force.

10-19 July 2023 – UN High Level Policy Forum on Sustainable Development (New York, New York): On 15 July 2023 in New York City, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined a side-event hosted by the Women’s Major Group of the UN High Level Policy Forum on Sustainable Development, in her capacity as Co-HOD of the EU W20 Delegation and DLI Director.

16-19 September 2023 – UN SDG Summit 2023 (New York, New York): On 16-19 September in New York City, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined the UN General Assembly convening of the SDG Summit 2023 and SDG Action Weekend, in her capacity as Co-Head of the EU W20 Delegation and DLI Director.

20 September 2023 – womenENcourage Conference (Trondheim, Norway): On 20 September, Katja Legisa, DLI Entrepreneurship Director, contributed to a panel on Interventions and Initiatives of Gender Inclusion in Academia and Industry, as part of the ACM womENcourage conference in collaboration with the EUGAIN, European Network For Gender Balance in Informatics, a COST Action funded by the European Union.

28 September 2023 – Rethinking Harmony in Asia 2023 (Online): 28 September, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, provided a keynote on “Ensuring and Ethical and Safer Digital World,” as part of The Asian Network virtual conference on Rethinking Harmony in Asia 2023.

23-24 November 2023 – UNESCO STEM Alliance Conference (Venice, Italy): On 23-24 November in Venice, Italy, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined a panel at the UNESCO STEM Alliance Conference as part of her recent UNESCO research on “Gender in STEM in Southeast Europe.”

To browse past activities with DLI and our partners, please click here. Be sure to also visit our calendar, sign up for the DLI Newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram in order to keep up with DLI events and activities!

17 September 202314 March 2025

Answering the Call of Herstory

State of the Feminist European Union

(Authored and published by Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, W20 EU Co-HOD, on 16 September 2023)

As a proud European feminist, activist and global representative of EU feminist civil society for many years, I am overjoyed to celebrate the groundbreaking accomplishments on gender equity and women’s rights achieved under leadership of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, that she highlighted in her State of the European Union speech this week.

Here are my feminist takes from the SOTEU speech by Madam President (emphasis and links added) which, in my opinion, reflects a step-change for feminist policy in the EU and worldwide.

1) Within the first minutes of her speech, Madame La Présidente was talking about women, the achievements for women–and society–delivered under her leadership, and about being a woman!

“I would also like to thank you for the ground-breaking and pioneering work we did on gender equality. As a woman, this means a lot to me.

We have concluded files that many thought would be blocked forever, like the Women On Boards Directive and the historic accession of the EU to the Istanbul Convention.

With the Directive on pay transparency we have cast into law the basic principle that equal work deserves equal pay. There is not a single argument why – for the same type of work – a woman should be paid less than a man.”

Do women work 13% less hard than men at the same job? …No. No they don’t.

2) Next, we get the message that there’s still more to do, especially on the topic of gender-based violence. Of course.

“But our work is far from over and we must continue pushing for progress together. I know this house supports our proposal on combating violence against women. Here too, I would like that we cast into law another basic principle: No, means no. There can be no true equality without freedom from violence.”

3) Then VDL* expressly references motherhood and, indirectly, the adverse impact on women of shouldering 75% of care work in the EU–often without recognition, benefits or compensation.

“At the same time millions of parents – mostly mothers – are struggling to reconcile work and family, because there is no child care.”

*Btw how cool is it that “VDL” is member of the all-caps-acronym Club of Very Cool People like Brussels home-town favorite “JCVD”… ??!

4) And she mentions youth and NEETS, who are both more likely to be women. Yes, in the European Union, young women are less likely than young men to leave home, get an education, or hold down a job outside the home for money.

“And 8 million young people are neither in employment, education or training. Their dreams put on hold, their lives on stand-by. This is not only the cause of so much personal distress. It is also one of the most significant bottlenecks for our competitiveness. Because labour shortages hamper the capacity for innovation, growth and prosperity.”

5) Linked to this, the proportion of employed women in the EU trails that of men by 11 percent. As the W20, we keep fighting for G20 nations to deliver on “25×25” Brisbane Targets, to shrink by 25% the gender gap in labour market participation by 2025. The recent G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration** reaffirms G20 commitments to this objective.

**The G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration 2023

“So we need to improve access to the labour market. Most importantly for young people, for women.”

6) This isn’t a subject-matter take per se but a fist-pump for VDL amplifying the work of Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, another women-in-leadership icon!

“Christine Lagarde and the European Central Bank are working hard to keep inflation under control.”

7) Any progress on making digital technology safer and more respecting of citizens rights is going to positively impact the well-being of women in the digital society. Women are the biggest target of gender-based violence and harassment in physical and digital spaces. This is why the EU’s full accession to the Istanbul Convention, which enforces freedom from the threat of violence, is also a critical achievement under VDL’s leadership.

“[E]urope has become the global pioneer of citizens rights in the digital world. The DSA and DMA are creating a safer digital space where fundamental rights are protected. And they are ensuring fairness with clear responsibilities for big tech. This is a historic achievement – and we should be proud of it.”

The DSA and DMA and Istanbul Convention. OH MY.

8) Now cue discussion on AI and the leadership role Europe continues to play–the “Brussels Effect”***–in determining global digital technology policies based on human rights. Again, these AI “guidelines” are critical since women are humans (!) and at greater risk than men of threats posed by AI: Discrimination, harassment, violence, and job security (since women’s work tends to be more precarious, and under/unpaid to start with)!

***The Brussels Effect – Anu Bradford, Columbia Law

“The same should be true for artificial intelligence.

It will improve healthcare, boost productivity, address climate change. But we also should not underestimate the very real threats.Hundreds of leading AI developers, academics and experts warned us recently with the following words:

‘Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.’

AI is a general technology that is accessible, powerful and adaptable for a vast range of uses – both civilian and military. And it is moving faster than even its developers anticipated.”

Nothing at all disturbing about the lack of women in this AI-generated image of AIs and Humans, posted on the European Parliament ‘AI Act’ webpage…

NB: Why is AI moving faster than anticipated? No women AI developers and NO women tech decision-makers. No guard dogs. No guiderails. Except VDL, of course.

“So we have a narrowing window of opportunity to guide this technology responsibly. I believe Europe, together with partners, should lead the way on a new global framework for AI, built on three pillars: guardrails, governance and guiding innovation.”

[…]

“Our AI Act is already a blueprint for the whole world.”

[…]

“Now we should bring all of this work together towards minimum global standards for safe and ethical use of AI.”

9) What follows deserves a big shout-out to our G20 India and W20 India Presidency teams for an agreement that underscores this historic moment for EU-India geopolitical and economic relations (and my favourite picture from this year’s G20 Summit).

“[T]he most ambitious project of our generation. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.”

Caption This – Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/AFP/Getty Images

10) Women are disproportionately impacted by climate change, a fact explicitly articulated in the 2023 G20 India Leaders’ Declaration. They are also at the greatest risk of perils inherent to displacement caused by climate change, war, political upheaval, etc. As such, action to improve the situation anywhere on this continuum–tackling climate change, migration, human trafficking, gender-based violence, and boosting asylum protections and assimilation and other social efforts–will benefit women.

“[W]ith the Pact [on Migration and Asylum], we are striking a new balance. Between protecting borders and protecting people. Between sovereignty and solidarity. Between security and humanity.”

“Acknowledging the disproportionate impact of climate change […] on all women and girls, accelerating climate action must have gender equality at its core.” G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration 2023, Page 26

10bis) Ditto regarding human trafficking. And the emphasis is justified!!!!!

“And we need to work with our partners to tackle this global plague of human trafficking. This is why the Commission will organise an International Conference on fighting people smuggling. It is time to put an end to this callous and criminal business!”

Her son didn’t understand. And he asked his mother why she was crying. She answered: ‘Because we are home.’ ‘But this is not Ukraine,’ he argued. So she explained: ‘This is Europe.’

11) The narrative that follows is tragic. All too common. And cannot be amplified enough. Kudos to President von der Leyen for making the heart and soul of her SOTEU address the story of Victoria Amelina–refugee, mother, journalist, and victim of the cruelties of male-perpetrated-violence (WAR) in Ukraine! Slav zhinki! Viva mujeres! Slava Ukraini!

“Honourable Members,

On the day when Russian tanks crossed the border into Ukraine, a young Ukrainian mother set off for Prague to bring her child to safety. When the Czech border official stamped her passport, she started crying. Her son didn’t understand. And he asked his mother why she was crying.

She answered: ‘Because we are home.’

‘But this is not Ukraine,’ he argued.

So she explained: ‘This is Europe.’

On that day, that Ukrainian mother, felt that Europe was her home. Because ‘home is where we trust each other’. And the people of Ukraine could trust their fellow Europeans.

Her name was Victoria Amelina. She was one of the great young writers of her generation and a tireless activist for justice.

Once her son was safe, Victoria returned to Ukraine to document Russia’s war crimes. One year later she was killed by a Russian ballistic missile, while having dinner with colleagues. The victim of a Russian war crime, one of countless attacks against innocent civilians.

Amelina was with three friends that day – including Héctor Abad Faciolince, a fellow writer from Colombia. He is part of a campaign called ‘Aguanta, Ucrania’ – ‘Resist, Ukraine’, created to tell Latin Americans of Russia’s war of aggression and attacks on civilians. But Héctor could never imagine becoming the target himself. Afterwards, he said he didn’t know why he lived and she died. But now he is telling the world about Victoria. To save her memory and to end this war.

And I am honoured that Héctor is here with us today. And I want you to know that we will keep the memory of Victoria – and all other victims – alive.

Aguanta, Ucrania. Slava Ukraini!”

Honourable Members, this was Europe answering the call of history.

12) More war. More displaced women and children. We cannot shrink from the responsibility of caring for them. This is Europe answering the call of HERSTORY!

“Since the start of the war, four million Ukrainians have found refuge in our Union. And I want to say to them that they are as welcome now as they were in those fateful first weeks. We have ensured that they have access to housing, healthcare, the job market and much more.

Honourable Members, this was Europe answering the call of history.

And so I am proud to announce that the Commission will propose to extend our temporary protection to Ukrainians in the EU. Our support to Ukraine will endure. We have provided 12 billion euros this year alone to help pay wages and pensions. To help keep hospitals, schools and other services running.”

13) Answering that call. Again. This is where I wax romantic about my love of the European Union. They say the converted are the most militant. Guilty.

“We need to set out a vision for a successful enlargement. A Union complete with over 500 million people living in a free, democratic and prosperous Union. A Union complete with young people who can live, study and work in freedom. A Union complete with vibrant democracies in which judiciaries are independent, oppositions are respected, and journalists are protected. Because the rule of law and fundamental rights will always be the foundation of our Union – in current and in future Member States. This is why the Commission has made the Rule of Law Reports a key priority.”

[…]

“And it will help ensure that our future is a Union of freedom, rights and values for all.”

14) And now the baton is passed to my adopted nation, Belgium. As a committed feminist, our Prime Minister Alexander De Croo will no doubt continue to heed the Call of Herstory!

“[W]e will put forward our ideas to the Leaders’ discussion under the Belgian Presidency. We will be driven by the belief that completing our Union is the best investment in peace, security and prosperity for our Continent. So it is time for Europe to once again think big and write our own destiny!”

[…]

“If it matters to Europeans, it matters to Europe.

Think again about the vision and imagination of the young generation I started my speech with. It is the moment to show them that we can build a continent where you can be who you are, love who you want, and aim as high as you want.

A continent reconciled with nature and leading the way on new technologies.

A continent that is united in freedom and peace.

Once again – this is Europe’s moment to answer the call of history.

Long live Europe.”

15) Mic drop.

From one great Leader of the Free World to Another..

Thank you, Madam President, for your leadership and vision over the last five years which have made these successes a reality! It’s a great time to be a European… feminist!

Read the full text and watch the video of Ursula von der Leyen’s SOTEU 2023 speech.

Or watch it here care of EURONEWS:

10 September 202314 March 2025

New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration Wrap-Up

On behalf of feminist EU civil society, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, W20 EU Co-Head of Delegation, led the W20 EU Delegation‘s contribution to the G20 India Leader’s Declaration which onboarded significant language from the W20 India Communiqué, and includes the following:

✨1. Launching a G20 Women’s Empowerment Working Group, the most institutionalized mechanism in the G20;
✨2. Implementing the G20 Roadmap Towards and Beyond the Brisbane 25×25 Goal, with annual reporting by the International Labour Organization and OECD – OCDE;
✨3. Halving the gender digital divide by 2030;
✨4. Closing the gender pay gap and ensuring women’s equal access to decent work and quality jobs;
✨5. Eliminating gender-based violence; and
✨6. Increasing women’s participation in climate change mitigation and adaptation, and disaster risk reduction.

W20 Team India 2023, led by Sandhya Purecha and Dharitri Patnaik, deserve massive recognition for their leadership and vision, as do all W20 delegates and experts, for their hard work, determination and commitment to making this outcome a reality.

The W20 EU Delegation is eager to continue moving the bar forward for the world’s girls and women as part of W20 Brazil in 2024.

Read the full G20 New Delhi Declaration.