Women in Agrifood Summit
On 1 December 2023, we joined the Women in Agrifood Summit 2023 in Vilnius, Lithuania. Women in Agrifood Summit 2023 was not only the closure event of this year’s Empowering Women in Agrifood (EWA) programme edition. It is also an opportunity for all women interested in the agrifood, agri-tech, and business sectors to network: meet each other, exchange experiences, develop new strategies, discover personal potential, and contribute to making a global difference.
The event gathered over 100 participants of the EWA programme from 11 European countries. Among the speakers were numerous experts and managers in the agri-food industry who will undertake important discussions on the cooperation of women and men in the process of transforming the sector towards a better future.
Our contribution
Lorena van de Kolk, Managing Partner at Schuttelaar and Founder of GAIA – the Gender Alliance in Agriculture, joined as a speaker the panel discussion “Gender balance in the agrifood sector – why men and women shall cooperate for the better future of our food system?”.
Lorena exchanged with Małgorzata Druciarek (Diversity and Inclusion Manager at EIT Food North-East) and Dr Prof. Aleš Kuhar (Associate Professor at University of Ljubljana, Slovenia).
In this session, panelists exchanged views on the importance of including more women in decision making position, representation at all levels and how to inspire young girl.
Lorena van de Kolk shared gender bias can still affect our perception and her wish for the legal incorporation of gender equality.
Małgorzata Druciarek pointed out that a "Report from the FAO shows that empowering women in the #agrifood sector help to reduce world hunger and builds resilience in the agrifood systems" while Dr. Prof Kuhar shared his own personal experience in leading a team of young women.
Our impact
We are committed to work towards more gender equality, both internally and externally. Within Schuttelaar & Partners, we strive for equal pay. Our activist work group, led by employees, launched in October 2023 our first diversity survey to collect feedback from our colleagues on how to improve our approach to DEI (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion).
We are proud to bring a gender lens to all of our projects. After leading and coordinating the gender taskforce of 2 large scale European projects, we built on its success to launch GAIA, the Gender Alliance for Innovation in Agriculture.
By cooperating with a wide range of clients, we are able to share our expertise and learn from their best practices. We are looking forward to continue our contribution to achieve gender equality by 2030 as stated by SDG 10.