On 20th of November 2021, an online seminar with the title “ROMANIA & GREECE: COMMON STRUGGLE FOR GENDER EQUALITY IN THE WORKPLACE” was organized by GRIPEN Europe with the support of three organizations: Association of Romanian Women from Greece, Xenios Polis and Excess Machina.

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the event took place virtually on Google Meet. Its initial goal was to familiarize stakeholders with the major aims and objectives of FENCE project related to gender and to actively engage and motivate the participants to use the outputs of the project, with a main focus on the online platform.

The seminar was open for all those that had registered beforehand. Among the 17 participants there were students, educators, project managers, members and representatives of private organizations both from Romania and Greece. The keynote speaker of the event was Ana-Maria Cuciureanu, the administrator of the Association of Romanian Women from Greece. In her speech “Romania – Greece: gender (in)equality in two countries. Statistics & facts”, it was highlighted that according to Gender Equality Index 2020, the two countries are at the bottom among the 27 EU Member States in gender equality (Romania 25^th, Greece 27^th).

Afterwards, the outputs of the FENCE project were briefly presented and discussed demonstrating the urgent need for gender equality, especially in the workplace.  XENIOS POLIS, a partner organization from Greece, conducted the presentation of the five FENCE Intellectual Outputs (IOs):

After the presentation of the digital platform and the tutorial video created by FENCE consortium, participants prompted to use it for their personal and professional development. GRIPEN, also, presented the idea of creating an (e)HelpDesk for women who face discrimination in the workplace and in their personal life, in order to achieve the sustainability of FENCE project. 

The end of the seminar was dedicated to the general discussion. For this purpose, GRIPEN planned an interactive activity. During the discussion, participants shared their real-life stories on gender discrimination and highlighted the complexity of the project, its openness to anyone interested, as well as the usage of open-source tools.