You can read the survey here.

Meanwhile on the Global Stage, IPA and UN Women opened the day’s programme with Publishing Equality: Shaping the future of the book industry. The panel built on IPA and UN Women’s ongoing cooperation to strengthen approaches to gender equality across the industry. UN Under-Secretary-General Melissa Fleming opened proceedings before a panel led by Rachel Martin and featuring Olga Osaulenko, Katharina Raabe, Slava Svitova and Gvantsa Jobava. Together they  considered how publishing houses might move beyond individual initiatives towards sustainable and systematic gender sensitive policies and practices. Taking as its reference the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a global framework for advancing gender equality in the workplace, the marketplace and the community, the discussion examined how these principles could be applied in a meaningful way within publishing. The session closed with the launch of a new pledge which you can sign here:

https://pledgeforequality.internationalpublishers.org

Later in the afternoon, UN Publications hosted Beyond the headlines: Authors from countries in crisis read and reflect on their work and human rights. The session brought together authors from countries affected by geopolitical conflict, some of which remain in the international spotlight while others have slipped from the daily news and are now often described simply as protracted crises. The speakers were Heba Al-Wasity, Shila Behjat, Radka Denemarková, Ege Dündar, Melissa Fleming and María José Viera-Gallo.

In parallel, the IPA’s Director of Communications and Freedom to Publish was moderating a discussion as part of the International University Presses Convention. Following a typically compelling keynote presentation on AI by IPA Copyright Committee member, Peter Schoppert, Taylor’s session, Beyond English: At the Crossroads of AI and Multilingualism featured Lisa Quinn of McGill-Queen’s University Press, Phindi Dlamini of the University of KwaZulu Natal Press, and Yissel Arce Padrón of the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. Together they considered their respective multilingual realities and the “sharp juxtaposition” their presses face in the age of Artificial Intelligence. The panel closed with optimism noting the importance of publishing and the opportunity for publishers to drive the conversation in a better, more human direction.

Saturday will bring the meeting of national bookstand coordinators and a PublisHer mentoring session with IPA President Gvantsa Jobava. On Sunday, IPA and UN Women close our programme with Why Women Write on the Global Stage ahead of the Friedenspreis ceremony.

An amazing week coming to a close and demonstrating yet again the vibrancy of publishing and the impact publishers can have on the world.