Twenty-first International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

The seventeenth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), Partnerships for the Goals, aims to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development. The successful implementation of this SDG will help the execution and achievement of the other sixteen. The main interest of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of multi-stakeholder partnerships (SDG 17) to effectively promote the role of women (SDG 5) in rural Spain. A multiple case study approach to data collection was undertaken using desk research and semi-structured interviews. The case study covered three small-medium sized towns in the province of Guadalajara, in the autonomous community of Castilla La Mancha located in central Spain. According to the National Institute of Statistics of Spain (INE), Guadalajara is one of the provinces, along with Soria and Burgos, that has the largest number of towns whose population is less than 1,000 inhabitants. Through this study, the main obstacles and problems experienced by women in rural areas were identified and how the latter prevented both the women themselves and their villages from progressing socio-economically, thereby leading towards a path of change and progress.