When you are a woman, it becomes complex to define the professional development you would like to achieve since, in some way, the family, traditions, and customs prepare us mainly for family assistance tasks. In these times, we are experiencing a global paradigm shift in which the proposal that is promoted is to abandon that role for another, which puts the core of beliefs in tension.

In this context, being able to see yourself as an economically independent professional woman who can express her own thoughts but at the same time strengthen the foundations of society by thinking in community, it requires an effort that you must be willing to make, but also of a boldness that is achieved through alliances.

From the observation and experience of the Urban Thinkers Campus (UTCs)  in Mexico and Ecuador carried out since 2019 to date, we can point out that when innovating and advancing in issues that concern humanity, such as life in cities, women have been the most tenacious allies. Women face challenges that are replicated regardless of the region, country, culture or belief, and whose solutions are global given that local problems are global.

The Urban Thinkers Campus (UTC) model is an initiative of the UN-Habitat World Urban Campaign, conceived as an open space that includes a series of plenary sessions with debates at the level of international experts, to bring together governments, civil society, researchers, and personalities from academia, local authorities, professional organizations, and youth groups, to propose solutions to urban challenges and achieve green, productive and more inclusive cities.

From this logical framework, we can analyze the natural and effective possibilities that women have to access knowledge and power, apply technology to personal and community development, and generate alliances during and after these urban thought encounters.

On the other hand, we observe that the generation and escalation of alliances represent a significant challenge to be addressed since there is a vocation and intention to carry them out, but the routines of the organizations and personal objectives make them difficult and harsh to specify and to hold.

Women 2030, a Smartly initiative, proposes a scheme of alliances between women to achieve sustainable career development. During the campuses, we emphasize the importance of Women Promoting Women, aware that the model of women that we propose is resisted by society and by the women who are already in decision-making positions.

The analysis postulated so far will be under the scrutiny of the social, economic, and environmental model that the region’s political systems propose for our democracies.

In this sense, Smartly promotes Parliament SDGs, a unique initiative dedicated to bringing an International Agenda to the legislative level of cities, where usually a Global Agenda hardly reaches.

Smartly unites different topics: urban legislation, women, sustainable entrepreneurs. For instance, we developed an ordinance on beekeeping and SDGs that promotes and protects this economic activity, highlighting its relevance to producing healthy and accessible food for the population and showcasing bees as an indicator of a healthy environment. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicates that beekeeping can help alleviate poverty, protect biodiversity, and ensure food security.

In that context, we focused on the role of women as crucial players in this activity, and we included a specific article about Women and SDG 5 in the ordinance. When analyzing beekeeping, in the social imaginary, the activity is usually represented by men beekeepers. At the same time, plenty of women attend to the hive and develop the action with their husbands. Consequently, these men’s visibility in the activity has impacted the absence of womenpreneurs and businesswomen doing beekeeping.

Also, we have observed that beekeeping has not had enough inter-generational transmission. It is a lucrative activity in multiple aspects that can be carried out by female-headed households, single women, or any women that want to leave poverty and be included in the economy.

In the context of three global crises like Climate Change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the global security crisis and latent nuclear risk that affects human life and impacts all communities, we emphasize the preponderant role of the Governments in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the New Urban Agenda for the good living.

This article is based on the experience of the Smartly #Women2030 program, and the conclusions published in the UTC online Reports: Vibrant and Inclusive Urban Life First and Second Edition.