Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona

On Monday, June 25th, the presentation of the 4th issue paper and the debate of the Metropolis Association "Egalitarian metropolitan spaces in the context of global agendas" were held at the European Committee of the Regions headquarters, in Brussels. The Cooperation Service of the AMB participated and moderated the session throughout the day.

Metropolis is an ensemble of 137 world metropolis—the AMB among them—with the main objective of being meeting point for metropolitan areas around the world to exchange opinions and debate policies related to metropolitan development. One of the key elements in order to promote this dialogue is the figure of the Metropolis Observatory.

Gender mainstreaming in public policies

During the day, there was a debate on the necessity to incorporate gender equity to the metropolitan agenda in a transversal manner. As examples, some experiences on mobility, urbanism and public spaces were shared. In addition, the importance of working with global, metropolitan and local agendas was stressed, and featuring metropolitan areas as strategic territories that can help making progress towards gender equity. It is accepted that the metropolitan approach encourages analysis that cannot be perceived from a municipal perspective, and it also allows the identification of new supramunicipal high-impact challenges and solutions.

With this issue paper, Metropolis shows its commitment to gender equity and its positioning in the world agenda. One of the main conclusions drawn from the debate is that it will not be possible to have fair and equitable metropolis without a firm intent to incorporate gender mainstreaming to public policies of the metropolises.