On April 25, the Russian Public Chamber discussed the role of the women’s community in the modern world in a round table format, and also signed a number of documents on interaction and expansion of international cooperation in the field of public diplomacy in such strategic areas as education, science, economics and culture.
The organizer of the discussion is the NGO “International Union of Women”. The meeting was moderated by the President of the organization, Alfiya Amirova.
“In the modern world, women occupy key positions in politics, economics, science, art, education and other fields, and in the face of drastic changes and new realities, they play an important role in strengthening interaction and trust. Based on this, it is important for us to expand the areas of joint work between women’s communities,” the moderator said, opening the meeting.
The event was attended by leaders of women’s communities of the CIS countries, representatives of legislative and executive authorities, relevant ministries and departments, international organizations, public figures, experts.
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, strengthen the institution of the family, protect health and expand opportunities for the implementation of business ideas.
Natalia Zabolotskikh, Director General of the Eurasian Center for Project Initiatives, political scientist, made a presentation of the author’s International research project “The Female Face of Public Diplomacy: from Motive to Action”, telling 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 slightly in recent years,” the expert noted.
According to open source data, by the end of 2023 there were 16 female heads of state (10.6% of countries) and 16 female heads of government (8.3%). There are still disproportionately more men at the ministerial level in the field of foreign affairs: women ministers account for only 25% of such portfolios. At the parliamentary level, women account for only 26.5% of the seats.
Today, among 131 diplomats in Russia with the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary are Lyudmila Vorobyova, Director of the Third Asia Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, and Eleonora Mitrofanova, Russian Ambassador to Bulgaria. 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 a specific practical result of their activities. Among them are the winners of the International competition “Leader of People’s Diplomacy”.
“My task is not only to draw conclusions, develop recommendations based on the results of the study, but also to introduce a wide audience to my interviewees, to tell about their life path, the situations they encountered in the process of scaling projects, about the connection with Russia, about the attitude of foreigners to our country abroad. Interviews in some cases turn out to be very deep, and each interviewee is an example of perseverance and imitation,” the political scientist said.
To date, the expert has worked with representatives of Abkhazia, Mexico, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Romania, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates. Despite the fact that the project started in early April, Natalia Zabolotskikh shared with the participants of the round table the first developments and conclusions:
– compatriots living abroad and social workers living in the country can have different motives for implementing international projects:
in the first case, “finding yourself in a foreign country”, adaptation, search for “people like you on linguistic and cultural grounds”;
The second is an active civic position, the need for self–realization and public recognition. An interesting feature is that among those over the age of 45, they more often pointed to 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 the field of public diplomacy that women develop, there are practically no such areas as science, IT, sports, rarely business, legal protection, historical memory. More often than others – education and culture;
– in about half of the cases, the sphere of social activity that a woman engages in at the international level does not coincide with the sphere of the main type of activity that generates income. This feature is most pronounced in Russia;
– among the promising areas for the development of cooperation, the participants of the study highlight youth and especially children of compatriots; high art and literature; ecology.
– factors that prevent the scaling of projects: open Russophobia in a number of countries, and not from ordinary citizens and public figures, but from the authorities. In the same countries where there is no Russophobia, there are obstacles in temporary and financial resources.
“I’m at the very beginning of the journey. The scale 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 at least 20 countries on different continents and present the result at the Eurasian Women’s Forum. It will be held this fall in St. Petersburg,” the author of the study said.
