 The representation of women at the highest level of governance in the region is being strengthened through a 2D virtual conference. The Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians of the Caribbean Americas and the Atlantic Regional Strengthening Virtual Conference hosted in St. Lucia from December 7 to 8, 2021, guided by the theme, Strong Women, Strong Region, Economic Empowerment of Women. The focus of the conference is to engage female parliamentarians in the region in discussion on the hurdles faced and the opportunities to improve representation. At the opening session of the conference on Tuesday, December 7, 2021, Minister for Commerce, Manufacturing, Business Development, Cooperatives and Consumer Affairs Honourable Emma Hippolit welcomed the participants. She said the event affords the participants the opportunity to reflect on their leadership roles. How as women parliamentarians, we can network, we can learn and we can take decisions that would impact our women folks, especially in an era of COVID and everything changing. How do we sit down and understand the challenges facing our women and how do we support them economically? Also, how do we encourage young women to consider coming up and serving in the parliament? And that is a challenge because as you know, most times our women are there, they are in the politics first on the ground, but they sort of shy away from presenting themselves for that office. So our role is to try to put programs in place to encourage our young people to take on that mantle. It is a serious responsibility. It is a responsibility that we need to own up to. The chair of the conference and speaker of the House of Representatives in Bailey's Honourable Valerie Woods, while highlighting the objectives of the virtual conference, said the intent is to hear the experiences of the women in attendance. The intent is to hear from them about the experiences at the level of leadership that they've been having and also from some of the panelists that will be presenting to hear from them the up-to-date statistics of access to financing for women. For example, access to education, access to health care, the mechanisms used in addressing the impacts of not just the pandemic, but also the climate crisis that have occurred over the years, how it has reached our women, or for the lack of a better term, not reached our women. And so the idea behind the two days is to have the dialogue and the space. Honourable Woods underscored the importance of women supporting women to increase female representation in areas of Gabnon. Honourable Valerie Woods, while in St. Dusha met with Prime Minister Honourable Philip J. Pierre and other members of Parliament to gain a comprehensive understanding of the structure and operations of St. Dusha's Parliament.