March 8, 2026 to make visible, acknowledge and advance: institutional event and activities at the UAB

The day will begin with an opening address by Rector Javier Lafuente Sancho and will continue with a presentation by Secretary General Esther Zapater on the main lines of work and gender equality policies at the UAB. This year, the central moment of the event will be the recognition of the career and contribution of Dr Maria Prats Ferret, former director of the Observatory for Equality (now the Equality and Diversity Service) and member of the Research Group on Geography and Gender (UAB), for her sustained work aimed at consolidating a feminist perspective in geography and promoting gender mainstreaming within the discipline, with a significant impact on both research and teaching. The event will conclude with a performance by the UAB Chamber Choir. 

This initiative forms part of the V Action Plan for Gender Equality of the UAB and fulfils the measure that provides for organisation of an institutional event to mark International Working Women’s Day. Included already in the first Action Plan (2006), this measure represented a turning point, as it institutionalised for the first time at the UAB the commemoration of 8 March. In its early editions, a substantial part of the day was devoted to presenting data on the situation of women at the university, with the aim of contrasting the perception of the university environment as a space free of inequalities with evidence showing unbalanced distributions in certain responsibilities and activities.  

Now, the initiative preserves this spirit of diagnosis and visibility while renewing it with a broader and more collective perspective: an invitation to recognition, but also to continue learning, questioning and transforming in everyday lie, what often remains invisible. In this sense, the event also becomes a platform and a driving force for the awareness-raising activities that the UAB carries out throughout the academic year. 

[You can register to attend by clicking here.] 

Below you can also find the programme of events and activities taking place at the UAB around 8 March. 

5th March

• Faculty of Communication Sciences

📍 Opening at 12:00. Corridor on the lower floor and first floor of the Faculty.

This is a collection showcasing the career paths of women professionals in the sector, with the aim of highlighting female talent and providing new role models for students. The exhibition can be visited until April 7 in the lower-floor corridor of the centre and in an audiovisual installation on the first floor.

The initiative, promoted by the Equality Commision, brings together a selection of women linked to journalism, audiovisual communication, advertising, corporate communication and other emerging areas of the field. All of them have been invited to share their testimonies in different formats, offering reflections on the impact of gender in their careers.

The exhibition is born from the desire to highlight experiences that often remain invisible and to offer students models that reflext close, possible and contemporary realities. The exhibition also aims to foster debate on the unresolved challenges regarding equality and on the conditions under which women carry out their professional activity in a sector marked by constant change.

• Faculty of Psicology and Logopedia

📍From 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. – Room 115, Faculty of Arts and Humanities

Per a una justícia reparadora de violències sexuals a Guatemala i Hondures. 

Dialogue/exchange with Honduran activist Cintia Julissa and Maya community therapist Elsa Rabanales. 

Organised by SUDS, Feminisms. 

6th March

• Faculty of Medicine

📍From 12:00 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. – Aula M5‑001 (Basic Medical Sciences Unit) 

Institutional welcome by Albert Selva O’Callaghan, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, followed by the talks: 

“The incomplete gaze: gender and systemic blindness in health” by Teresa Font 

“Deciding from vulnerability: experiences of reproductive decision‑making in women living with HIV” by Ariadna Huertas Zurriaga 

“Situations of workplace violence in the practice of physiotherapy” by Marlen Moreno Martínez 

Finally, presentation of the Equality and Diversity Service and the Awards for Final Degree Projects with a gender perspective, by Lydia Giménez Llort. 

From 9 to 13 March

• Les Dones ens Movem (Women on the Move)

📍 Physical Activity Service (SAF) and The libraries at the UAB

Under the motto Les Dones ens Movem (Women on the Move), the SAF is launching an initiative to promote physical activity among women in the university community, help reduce the gender gap in sports participation, and encourage a healthy, active, and inclusive lifestyle. The activities will take place at the SAF sports facilities and some at the UAB Libraries, and registration is free and open to all women in the university community, as well as to anyone who is keen to join this movement.

You can consult the full programme here.

From 9 to 20 March

Josefina Castellví Exhibition: Trencar el gel (Breaking the Ice)

📍 Ground Floor, Veterinary Library

As part of Women's Week, the Veterinary Library is hosting an exhibition dedicated to Josefina Castellví i Piulachs (Barcelona, 1935-2026), oceanographer and marine biologist, a pioneer of the Spanish scientific presence in Antarctica and the first woman in the world to direct a permanent scientific base on the continent.

With a degree in Biology and specialisation in marine microbiology from the Sorbonne in Paris, Castellví took part in an Argentine oceanographic expedition in 1984, becoming the first Spanish woman to set foot on the frozen continent. Between 1989 and 1993, she direted the Spanish Antarctic Base Juan Carlos I, on Livingston Island. Over the course of her career, she published more than seventy scientific works and recieved distinctions such as the Creu de Sant Jordi (2003) and the Gold Medal of the Generalitat de Catalunya (2021).

The exhibition includes an overview of her professional career, a screeing of the documentary “Els records glaçats” (dir. Albert Solé, Minimal Films / TV3, 2013), and a collection of watercolours that evoke the polar landscapes and key moments that shaped her life.

10th March

• CCOO Union Section

📍Espai SIS | From 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. 

As part of 8 March, International Women's Day, the CCOO union section at the UAB is organising the event “Planting Struggle, Harvesting Equality”, open to the entire university community.

The programme includes writing feminist messages and demands on plantable paper cards —which will be symbolically planted as an expression of struggles that take root and grow— the shared reading of some of these messages, and the reading of the CCOO 8M manifesto.

11th March

• Faculty of Education Sciences

📍 From 1:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. | Plaça de les Oliveres

A glosa performance commemorating International Women's Day, under the motto: “Verses are improvised, rights are not.”

• Faculty of Sciences

📍From 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. – Sala d’Actes 

Optica’t (@opticat), a student association from the Faculty of Science, has organised a round table on women’s scientific leadership, featuring six researchers from the fields of Science, Biosciences and Engineering.

• Faculty of Biosciences

📍From 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. – Sala d’Actes 

Optica’t (@opticat), a student association from the Faculty of Science, has organised a round table on women’s scientific leadership, featuring six researchers from the fields of Science, Biosciences and Engineering.

12th March

• Faculty of Philosophy and Arts

Talk-Workshop "The Working Class: Voices of Sindillar".

📍 1:00 p.m. Sala Tarotdequinze

Sindillar is the first independent, feminist and anti-racist union of migrant women domestic amd care workers in the Spanish State, founded in Barcelona in 2011. It fights against labour precarity, social exclusion and racism, organising horizontally to defend the rights of women with and without residence permits. Sindillar functions as a space of convergence and mutual support, where women workers self-represent and fight to highlight the value f their work.

We invite the entire community —students, administrative and support staff, and academic staff— to this event, a space for feminist reflection.

16th March

• Faculty of Economics and Business & Tutoresport Programme

Documentary "Eternas".

📍 11:15 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. | Auditorium of the Faculty of Economics and Business

The documentary "Eternas" (in collaboration with Movistar+) will be screened and, afterwards, a round table will take place with the Olympic water polo players who won gold in Paris 2024, several of whom are UAB alumni.

The round table will address topic related to the following areas:

• Leadership and role structure within the team (formal and informal leadership, cohesion, and conflict management).
• Performance management in high-pressure contexts (decision-making, emotional regulation, and sustained motivation).
• Team culture and the transfer of high-level sports performance to organisational environments.

A form has been enabled —open until Thursday, 12 March at 6:00 p.m— through which questions may be submitted to the invited athletes and channelled to the round table. Priority will be given to questions that encourage critical reflection and are transferable to the management of sports and/or organisational teams.

Throughout the month of March 

• Faculty of Economics and Business 

📍Bellaterra Campus and Sabadell Campus 

Exhibition of the TFG of degrees of the Faculty of Economics and Business that in previous editions have been awarded as the best TFG with a gender perspective.