As an award aims to recognize innovation in improving social, economic and environmental sustainability in cities and regions, Guangzhou Award attaches great importance to gender equality. This is also the fifth goal of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. However, nowadays, women’s status remains to be raised. Throughout the world, heated discussions on the Internet are triggered by topics that concerning the equality between men and women every now and then. For instance, the #MeToo movement started by Alyssa Milano, an American actress in 2017. To celebrate the upcoming International Women's Day, Guangzhou Award Secretariat introduces the gender equality movements in Santa Ana (Costa Rica), Mezitli (Turkey) and some other regions around the world.

Initiatives of  Guangzhou Award 

Santa Ana, Costa Rica
Santa Ana en Cleta: Active Mobility for Women

Santa Ana en Cleta is a project dedicated to the empowerment of the local population by teaching women how to ride a bike and how to use it as a means of transport. Its objective is to transform the mobility and road culture of the city's 57,000 inhabitants. The project also contributes towards an improved urban environment, well-being, health, the recovery of public spaces and the right to use the city in a safe, respectful and sustainable way… (Read more)

Mezitli, Turkey
Women Producers Market

Mezitli Women Producers Market is an initiative that helps to strengthen local women as sellers, by providing them space and support to sell their local products. Gender equality is supported as well as a local sustainable economy by supporting small-scale production. Therefore, this initiative is supportive for a general better atmosphere of the district. Because of this initiative, they get more self-esteem to make their own life decisions… (Read more)

Umea, Sweden
Gendered City Tour: Challenging Power in Cities

Women are central to urban planning and development, both as key users of urban spaces in their role as home managers, and as key producers of residential environments in their role as community leaders and initiators of neighborhood networks. The idea about at Gendered City bus tour sprung from the need to find new ways to visualize successful work on gender equality, as well as visualizing and draw attention to issues that need to be addressed… (Read more)

Lulebergaz, Turkey
Sex, Egalitarian Approach and Directives 

Management perceptions in society have changed. The number of women and the scope of their roles in public service has increased. This increase in public and private enterprises has spread into other services in the community. Female bank managers, female employers, female waitresses, cashier women, female clerks, and also an observed increase in the number of female officers has appeared… (Read more)

Cases around the world

Chiapas, Mexico
Feminist movement against violence

(Picture from the Internet)

On December 29, 2019, more than 3000 women gathered in Zapatistas, the Mexican State of Chiapas, where they held the Second International Gathering of Women Who Struggle. The purpose of this gathering is to accuse that the capitalist and patriarchal system is like a judge that has declared them guilty of being born women and sentenced them to violence or death. In front of hundreds of people, the women who participated in the gathering talked about their suffering… (Read more）

New York, America
IOC Awards 2019 Women and Sport Trophies to gender equality advocates

（Picture from the Internet)