President Michelle Bachelet, in her governing programme, proposed situating equality between men and women at the highest level of the political agenda, and the Chilean government enacted the law that creates the Ministry for Women and Gender Equity for this purpose on 8th March 2015.

The law aims to strengthen the institutional structure for gender through a dedicated ministry with regulatory and economic capacities to develop intersectoral policies and public programmes with cultural and territorial relevance that recognise the diversity of women and are designed to promote gender equity and eliminating all forms of discrimination.

Faced with the challenge of implementing this ministry, Chile's National Service for Women (SERNAM) expressed its interest to EUROsociAL in learning about the experiences of European countries, specifically Sweden and Spain, in similar processes.

To support this process, on 9th October there was a workshop, promoted by EUROsociAL in which the experts Gunilla Sterner, from Sweden, and Isabel Martínez, from Spain, shared the experience and lessons learnt in the processes of creating institutions for the advancement of women in these two European countries.

The workshop was led by the Minister-Director of the National Service for Women, Claudia Pascual Grau, and its Deputy Director, Gloria Maira, and participants included the heads of the service and the national board of the national association of SERNAM employees (ANFUSEM).

The collaboration between the European Union's EUROsociAL Programme and SERNAM represents a decisive commitment on the part of the Programme to contributing to policies that promote equality between women and men, and it will continue preparing recommendations by the experts to serve as inputs for structuring and launching the new ministry.