Female experts from around the world meet to reflect on equality education

• eLankidetza and Bilbao City Council host event to promote the empowerment of women through the as stakeholders from Central America, Africa, Asia, the Basque Country and Spain come together to share experiences
• Co-education in an education system that pursues equality from a feminist and intersectional perspective

Experts and women from organisations, social movements and institutions from all over the world met this afternoon at Bilbao City Hall to participate in the XIV Positive Strategies for Development Conference. Ahalduntzeko zubi hezkidetzaileak. Local - global dialogue between co-educational experiences". eLankidetza-Basque Agency for Cooperation and Solidarity and Bilbao City Council hosted the conference from 5:30 this evening, and tomorrow, 19 March, from 9:30, at Itsasmuseum in Bilbao.

What is co-education?

In the words of Assumpta Aierdi, from Sorginlore and one of those in charge of creating the framework document for the conference, "coeducation is an education that demands equality from a feminist and intersectional perspective, both in formal education - a key space for socialisation, training and learning - and in non-formal and informal education spaces".

Coeducation comes with a questioning and greater awareness of gender gaps in relation to roles, spaces, power and values; mentoring for greater freedom, empowerment and sisterhood and transcending cisheteronormativity. It also involve active participation in the dissemination of imaginaries or narratives of coexistence that are egalitarian, supportive and free of violence. Finally, one of the objectives is to promote education based on intersectional feminist pedagogies that take into account the interrelationship between sex, gender, ethnicity, class and sexual orientation.

Why intersectional feminist education?

The currently hegemonic globalisation is based on the sex-gender system, on an extractivist, capitalist and imperialist model of production and consumption, and on physical and symbolic borders that are violence for individuals, peoples and the planet. These oppressions are normalised and expressed in multiple everyday forms. In this scenario, co-education - transformative, feminist, anti-racist and intersectional education - is presented as one of the positive strategies for development and equality.

However, in the face of the changes that have been achieved, there is an upsurge of resistance, a feeling of threat to normality and to the privileges constructed and established by cisheteronormative machismo - in coexistence with capitalism and colonialism.

14 years of promoting positive development strategies

Since 2005, the Basque Government, through eLankidetza, and Bilbao City Council have organised this biannual event for stakeholders from the global South and North to come together and share experiences, with the aim of sharing empowerment processes and learning from the results.

The aim of the conference is to create a space for experts and women from organisations in various countries to share their experiences, to make the practices of organisations supported by Basque NGOs visible and to debate the challenges of both international cooperation and education for social transformation.