NGO CSW 70 Virtual Side Event – Save the Date
On 16 March 2026, the ICA-AP Committee on Women will host a lively virtual side event at the NGO CSW70 Forum titled “From Summit to Scale: Institutionalising Women’s Leadership in Cooperatives.” The session will bring together cooperative leaders, policy advocates and gender practitioners to turn high-level commitments into practical, scalable actions.
The UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is the premier global platform for advancing gender equality, and the NGO CSW Forum runs alongside it to amplify grassroots voices and practitioner experience. In 2026, the NGO CSW70 Parallel Event will be in line with the official CSW70 priority theme: Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and addressing structural barriers.
Over the years, ICA-AP has contributed regularly to this conversation – participating in regional and global meetings, and sharing lessons from events such as the Asia-Pacific Women CEOs Summit (Vietnam, 2024) and ICA-AP & ACFSMC’s regional workshop on women CEOs in cooperatives (China, 2018). Building on that momentum, this side event focuses on how cooperatives can institutionalise the leadership gains achieved at summits.
The programme will be practical and evidence-driven. Short case presentations from women CEOs and cooperative leaders across the Asia–Pacific will showcase real-life examples of mentorship models, governance changes, and institutional practices that worked. We will draw on lessons from the 2024 Summit and the 2018 workshop, and bring in findings from ICA-AP’s gender policy review to understand which institutional factors enabled success. The goal is not just to celebrate good practice but to identify concrete, replicable pathways cooperatives can adopt to scale women’s leadership.
After the visibility of the International Year of Cooperatives in 2025, NGO CSW70 is an opportunity to convert summit pledges into sustained systems change that aligns with global priorities such as access to justice and inclusive institutions.
This event is for cooperative leaders, gender advocates, researchers, and anyone keen to move from inspiration to institution. Join us on 16 March – bring your questions, your examples, and your ambition to scale women’s leadership across Asia and the Pacific. Register here.