Vice President Võ Thị Ánh Xuân attended and delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of the 2023 Global Summit of Women in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on May 4 as part of her working visit to the country. VNA/VNS Photo Lâm Khánh

DUBAI – Vice President Võ Thị Ánh Xuân said Việt Nam's policies create favourable conditions for women and encourage them to participate in fields such as science, technology, engineering, and business to promote their strengths and entrepreneurial spirit.

She was speaking at the opening ceremony of the 2023 Global Summit of Women themed "Women: Leading a New Climate Change" in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday (local time).

More than 500 delegates, including high-level representatives from countries, women's organisations around the world, and female leaders of leading global corporations and businesses attended the event.

In her welcome address, Dr Irene Natividad, president of the summit emphasised the need to strengthen gender equality, empower women in all fields, promote social cohesion, enhance digital literacy and new trends that affect women's economic power such as fintech and artificial intelligence.

She also highlighted the importance of women taking the initiative and working together with their communities to adapt to the changing environment.

The Minister of Economy and Head of the UAE delegation Sheikh Abdulla bin Touq Al Marrit stressed the role and contributions of female scientists, entrepreneurs, and especially start-ups to promoting economic restructuring, which has helped the UAE achieve sustainable growth during many fluctuations in recent years.

He affirmed the desire of UAE and the region to boost women-owned business networks in order to enhance international economic cooperation and linkages.

The former Minister of Tourism and Sports and Head of the Thai delegation shared the contributions of mechanisms and movements connecting women, including the Global Summit of Women, to raise awareness among governments and citizens of gender equality, prevent gender violence and discrimination, and the correlation between this issue and women's contribution to socio-economic development.

At the opening ceremony, Vice President Xuân welcomed the theme of this year's summit and encouraged women worldwide to enhance their potential, keep up with global trends, proactively learn to succeed and contribute to society amid the significant changes caused by various global challenges and strong transformations towards sustainable development, green growth, and digital transformation.

Xuân shared Việt Nam's significant achievements in gender equality and empowering women, including the proportion of female National Assembly deputies reaching 30.3 per cent and the number of women-owned businesses accounting for 29.8 per cent, ranking sixth among countries with the highest proportion of women entrepreneurs.

Vietnamese women are also making significant contributions to solving global challenges, such as female Vietnamese officers and soldiers participating in UN peacekeeping forces, she said.

She suggested more efforts should be made to create favourable conditions for women to develop and contribute to society. She also stressed the need to ensure a peaceful, stable, and favourable international environment for cooperation and development, enhance multilevel cooperation among countries, organisations, and businesses in empowering women's economic power.

Xuân highlighted the importance of developing education and training in science, technology, engineering, and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) as a fundamental foundation to promote women's participation and prepare for the digital and knowledge economy era.

She also stressed the importance empowering women in building and implementing socio-economic development policies.

The 2023 Global Women's Summit took place from May 4-6. Việt Nam has participated in the plenary and thematic sessions with practical discussions on evaluating emerging challenges and trends in the region and in the world, as well as gender equality in the workplace, and the role of women in climate change adaptation, digital transformation. – VNS