
On April 25, 2024, leaders of women's communities in the CIS countries, representatives of legislative and executive authorities, relevant ministries and departments, international organizations, public figures, and experts discussed the role of the women's community in the modern world at the Civic Chamber of Russia, in a round table format. A number of documents on interaction and expansion of international cooperation in public diplomacy in such strategic areas as education, science, economics and culture were signed by the meeting participants.
The organizer of the discussion is the "International Women's Union". The meeting was moderated by the President of the organization, Alfiya Amirova.
“Women in the modern world occupy key positions in politics, economics, science, art, education and other fields, and in context of fundamental changes and new realities, they play an important role in strengthening interaction and trust. Based on this, it is important for us to expand areas of joint work between women’s communities,” - noted the moderator, opening the meeting.
The participants discussed the possibilities of expanding international cooperation in the new realities, the need to preserve the culture and traditions of the participating countries, strengthening the institution of family, health care and expanding opportunities for the implementation of business ideas.
General Director of the ANO Eurasian Peoples’ Assembly “Eurasian Center for Project Initiatives”, political scientist Natalia Zabolotskikh made a presentation of the author’s International Research Project “Woman’s Face” of public diplomacy: from motive to action”, talking about the methods, stages of work and shared the first developments.
“In recent years, cooperation in the format of public diplomacy has become a unique tool that allows building relations between states and peoples without conflicts on the basis of mutual understanding and mutual consideration of interests. Women play a significant role in the development of public diplomacy and the harmonization of international relations, while their number in the field of official diplomacy around the world has increased very little in recent years,” the expert noted.
According to data from open sources, at the end of 2023, there were 16 women heads of state (10.6% of countries) and 16 women heads of government (8.3%). At the ministerial level, men remain disproportionately outnumbered in foreign affairs, with women ministers holding only 25 per cent of such portfolios. At the parliamentary level, women hold only 26.5 per cent of seats.
Today in Russia among 131 diplomats with the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary are the Director of the Third Asian Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry Lyudmila Vorobyova and the Russian Ambassador to Bulgaria Eleonora Mitrofanova. Therefore, the main respondents of the study were recognized public diplomats - women who implement projects in a variety of directions, unite people from different countries and have concrete practical results from their activities. Among them are the winners of the International Competition “Leader of Public Diplomacy”.
“My task is not only to draw conclusions and develop recommendations based on the results of the study, but also to introduce a wide audience to my interlocutors - respondents, talk about their life path, the situations they encountered in the process of scaling projects, about connections with Russia, about attitudes foreigners to our country abroad. In some cases, interviews turn out to be very deep, and each interlocutor is an example of perseverance and imitation,” said the political scientist.
To date, the expert has worked with representatives of Abkhazia, Mexico, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Romania, Russia, and the UAE. Despite the fact that the project started in early April, Natalia Zabolotskikh shared her first findings and conclusions with the round table participants:
• among compatriots living abroad and social activists living in the country, one can identify different motives for implementing international projects: in the first case - “searching for oneself in a foreign country”, adaptation, searching for “people like you in terms of linguistic and cultural characteristics”; in the second - an active civic position, the need for self-realization and public recognition. An interesting feature is that among those over 45 years of age, they more often indicated the experience of living in the Soviet Union and the desire to maintain close relations between countries and peoples within the borders of the Union.
• among the areas in public diplomacy that women develop, there are practically no such areas as science, IT, sports, and rarely business, legal protection, or historical memory. Most often - education and culture;
• In about half of the cases, the sphere of public activity in which a woman is engaged at the international level does not coincide with the sphere of her main income-generating activity. This peculiarity is most clearly manifested in Russia;
• Among the promising areas for the development of co-operation, the participants of the study highlight youth and especially children of compatriots; high art and literature; ecology;
• factors that prevent projects from scaling up: open Russophobia in a number of countries, not on the part of ordinary citizens and public figures, but on the part of the authorities. In those countries where there is no Russophobia, there are time and financial resource constraints.
“The scope of the research is quite wide and my task is to have time to analyze a huge amount of information that will be collected in no less than 20 countries on different continents and present the result at the Eurasian Women’s Forum. It will take place this fall in St. Petersburg,” said the author of the study.