WHEN Equity–Empowerment–Change is a non-profit civil organization founded in 2012 with the mission of advancing women’s professional empowerment and promoting gender equality in public life. The organization operates under the distinctive title WHEN.
Its mission is to empower women themselves and contribute to transforming the social and economic framework that surrounds them. Its vision is a world in which all women have equal opportunities to become who they can and want to be.
WHEN (then known as Women On Top) began as a mentoring network through which any woman—regardless of professional sector, level of experience, or geographic location—could find a mentor to support her in addressing the challenges she faced in her professional life.
Today, WHEN designs and implements initiatives aimed at women’s professional and economic empowerment, the cultivation of inclusive workplace cultures, and the establishment of equality policies within businesses and organizations. At the same time, it works to raise awareness among society at large, public institutions, and the education system on issues of gender equality in public life.
The grant supports the implementation of a research study on the professional and educational needs of women in the Cyclades and the Dodecanese. The study was launched in 2023 across the Greek regions with the aim of exploring and gaining an in-depth understanding of the professional and educational needs of women living in non-urban areas of Greece—small towns, rural areas, and islands. It also seeks to identify the opportunities, challenges, and barriers women encounter throughout their educational and professional journey.
The overarching objective of the research is to contribute to strengthening women’s participation in employment and lifelong learning across all regions of Greece, through the development of targeted policies and tools informed by the study’s findings.
The research sample consists of 500 women from 10 regions of Greece (50 women per region), covering the majority of the country’s administrative regions. The grant will support the inclusion of the islands of Naxos and Kalymnos in the sample, representing the Cyclades and the Dodecanese respectively, and bringing the total number of participants in these areas to 100 women.