The first Women of Minorities project thematic meeting was held in Vienna on November 21st and 22nd. The Croatian Centre in Vienna hosted the event, which had 20 participants from 9 different countries in Europe and Central Asia. They represented 11 minorities and 11 FUEN Member organisations.
The programme began with a panel discussion on "International (gender) equality standards and the challenges to their implementation". Dr Antonija Petričušić from the University of Zagreb talked about the international legal frameworks protecting and promoting the rights of women and gender equality. Ms Anikó Orsós from the European Roma Rights Centre presented the challenges faced by Roma women in their path towards equality and the fight against multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination. Dr Zora Popova, the FUEN Scientific consultant and Project leader, then introduced different aspects of inequality, the tools that can address those, and the dimensions of equality to be considered when discussing the situation of women of minorities.
In the second panel, representatives from different organisations presented the equality standards, practices, and tools adopted by their institutions. The panellists were from the Catalan Plataforma per la Llengua, the Ecumenical Federation of Constantinopolitans, the Women Organization of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians from Romania (RMDSZ), and the Youth of the European Nationalities (YEN). The personal story of Ms Jelena Čarnojević from the Croatian Centre emphasised the importance of developing Protocols for guaranteeing gender equality at the institutional level.
On the event's second day, the participants engaged in a joint exercise outlining the way forward for FUEN and their organisations to bring positive changes by institutionalising gender equality. They developed mechanisms for safeguarding, monitoring, evaluating, and advancing their knowledge and capacities while mainstreaming it among their own (minority) communities. The workshop outputs are presented in the document "Towards Development of FUEN Equality Standards for the Network and the Member Organisations: Setting FUEN Equality Principles".