Date: Monday, 27 July 2026
Categories: News
Recognising what women already do | Field evidence from regional Greece
As you know, WHEN works to advance the economic inclusion of women through empowerment, institutional change and community infrastructure. As part of our contribution to the global dialogue on gender equality and sustainable development, we were pleased to submit a written statement to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), of which WHEN has been a member since 2025, highlighting the importance of empowering women in regional Greece as a key driver of gender equality in the country.
The statement, entitled “Accelerating the 2030 Agenda by recognising what women already do: field evidence from regional Greece“, draws on eight field studies conducted between 2023 and 2026 with the participation of 351 women aged 19 to 75 across mountainous, island, industrial and agricultural municipalities in Greece, as part of WHEN’s “Women of the Region initiative”. Building on these findings, we chose to include in our statement to ECOSOC a number of targeted observations and recommendations aimed at highlighting both the contribution of women in regional Greece and their specific needs.
Below, you can read the main excerpt from the statement;
“Across the Aristotelis, Faistos, Kalamata, Farsala, Olympia, Kato Nevrokopi and Doxato, Naxos and Kalymnos municipalities, one pattern recurred. Women sustain communities – through agricultural, domestic, care and seasonal labour, but their contribution remains largely uncounted. In Olympia and Farsala, women work the fields but are not registered as farmers. On Naxos, thirty-seven years of agricultural work yielded a pension of four hundred euros and for other women, seasonal labour due to the summer season remains equally informal. On Kalymnos, seafarers’ wives run households and local economies during long absences without formal economic recognition. In Faistos and Kalamata, women reported that the day was not long enough for the paid and unpaid labour they perform.
The 2030 Agenda accelerates what it measures and fails what it does not. Treating women’s unpaid agricultural, care and seasonal labour as economic activity is the single structural change that accelerates SDG 9, by broadening what innovation and inclusive industrialisation mean, SDG 11, by making visible the labour that sustains resilient and inclusive communities, and SDG 17, by partnering statistical systems with grassroots evidence.
We therefore urge Member States and United Nations entities to formally recognise and remunerate women’s unpaid agricultural, care and seasonal labour within national accounts and social-protection systems; to extend pay transparency and labour-rights frameworks to seasonal, island and agricultural economies; and to co-design rural, island and mountain development policy, in partnership with organisations that bring women’s voices into evidence. Each of these steps is concrete, coordinated, and transformative, and each accelerates what the joint theme of the Highlevel Segment and the High-level Political Forum calls for.
The pattern our research documents in regional Greece is a pattern familiar to small-island, mountainous, agricultural and post-industrial communities everywhere. Transformative action for the Sustainable Development Goals needs to be delivered in communities like these, or it will not be delivered at all.”
