Women, Family and Human Sustainability: The Future of Human Bonds
September 20–21, 2027
IESE Barcelona
Around the world, the bonds that sustain human life—in the family, at work, in the community—are under growing pressure: rising loneliness, falling birth rates, relationships reshaped by economic strain and new technologies. Women have been, and still are, central to creating, maintaining and repairing those bonds: as mothers and caregivers, as leaders in business and public life, as drivers of change in their organizations and communities. Yet their concrete experience, knowledge and leadership in this area are often treated as a side note rather than as the central question.
The 6th International Conference of Women and Leadership places women’s experience and leadership at the center of that debate. Across its five thematic blocks—family and social sustainability, relational fragility, artificial intelligence and human dignity, women’s real leadership trajectories, and the rebuilding of trust and care—the Conference asks one underlying question from a single perspective: what role women are playing, and what role they should play, in sustaining and rebuilding the human bonds on which a functioning society depends.
The Conference also looks at a very recent development: the Care Deal that the European Commission plans to present in 2027, the same year as the conference. For companies, this raises a question that can no longer be put off: what this new European priority will mean for business strategy, talent management and organizational competitiveness.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2027
9:00 – 9:30 a.m. Registration and Welcome Coffee
9:30 – 9:45 a.m. Welcome Addresses and Introduction
– Prof. Nuria Chinchilla, Professor of Managing People in Organizations, IESE Business School
9:45 – 10:45 a.m. Plenary Session I
– Guest speaker to be confirmed
10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Track Sessions I
12:15 – 12:30 p.m. Group Photo (Q-300 Terrace)
12:30 – 1:45 p.m. Track Sessions II
2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Lunch (North Campus Dining Room)
3:00 – 4:15 p.m. Plenary Session II · The European Care Deal and Its Impact on Business
– Guest speaker to be confirmed
4:15 – 5:00 p.m. Coffee Break
5:00 – 6:15 p.m. Track Sessions III
6:15 – 7:00 p.m. Break
7:00 p.m. Plenary Session III · Women Executives: Leadership Trajectories (open to IESE Alumni)
– Guest speaker to be confirmed
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2027
9:30 – 10:45 a.m. Track Sessions IV
10:45 – 11:15 a.m. Coffee Break
11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Track Sessions V
12:30 – 1:00 p.m. Closing Session
- Examine the structural pressures—demographic, technological, economic—that are weakening human bonds today, and understand women’s specific experience of those pressures and how they respond to them.
- Make visible, and bring into academic and public debate, the leadership role women already play—in the family, in organizations, in the community—in sustaining and repairing human connection.
- Explore how artificial intelligence and the transformation of work are reshaping relationships and human dignity, and what women’s leadership can contribute so that technology serves human bonds instead of eroding them.
- Connect rigorous research—family sociology, leadership studies, management—with the real trajectories of women leaders, moving beyond the abstract debate on quotas or “empowerment”.
- Generate, through the conference and its call for papers, a body of research that places women’s leadership and experience at the center of the future of human bonds, rather than treating them as one more application of a general theory of relationships.
- Explore the implications that the new European care framework—and the growing attention to women’s role in sustaining human bonds—will have for business strategy, talent management and organizational competitiveness.
Family and Social Capital
Examines the role of women in building the family and social networks that sustain trust, care and continuity across generations, at a time of falling birth rates.
Track: The Family as Foundation: Women, Social Capital and Intergenerational Continuity
Loneliness and Relational Fragility
Looks at the weakening of relationships and at the personal and professional cost women bear when they hold networks of care together.
Track: Breakdown of Bonds and Relational Fragility: Women as Architects of Connection
AI, Work and Human Dignity
Explores which leadership capacities, such as judgment, care and building trust, matter more as AI takes over technical tasks, and how women lead decisions about technology.
Track: AI, Work and Human Dignity: Women’s Leadership in the Age of Automation
Women’s Real Career Paths
Covers the actual career paths of women executives and how they integrate professional and family life through the different stages of life.
Track: Women, Leadership and Real Life Trajectories
Care and Social Renewal
Addresses how women rebuild trust within organizations after a crisis, and the dignity and professionalization of care work.
Track: Rebuilding Human Bonds: Women, Care, Trust and Social Renewal
TOPICS
TRACK 1. The Family as Foundation: Women, Social Capital and Intergenerational Continuity
Examines the role of women in building the family and social networks that sustain trust, care and continuity across generations, at a time of falling birth rates.
- Women as generators of social capital: the invisible work of family care
- Demographic crisis and human sustainability
- Women as transmitters of social capital and intergenerational continuity
TRACK 2. Breakdown of Bonds and Relational Fragility: Women as Architects of Connection
Looks at loneliness and the weakening of relationships, and at the personal and professional cost women bear when they hold networks of care together.
- Affective fragility and the crisis of belonging; liquid relationships and reversible bonds
- Women as architects of connection: the relational cost of care and of women’s leadership
- The generational gap in female loneliness: adolescent girls, the loneliest group in the world
TRACK 3. AI, Work and Human Dignity: Women’s Leadership in the Age of Automation
Explores which leadership capacities, such as judgment, care and building trust, matter more as AI takes over technical tasks, and how women lead decisions about technology.
- Inner freedom and leadership in saturated societies
- Women’s leadership and prudential judgment in the face of automation
- Women at the helm of technological decisions: women’s leadership in AI and digital transformation
TRACK 4. Women, Leadership and Real Life Trajectories
Covers the actual career paths of women executives and how they integrate professional and family life through the different stages of life.
- Real career paths of women executives and the hidden cost of those paths
- Integration, not balance: how women combine professional and family life across life stages
- Care leadership as an alternative to the conventional diversity discourse
TRACK 5. Rebuilding Human Bonds: Women, Care, Trust and Social Renewal
Addresses how women rebuild trust within organizations after a crisis, and the dignity and professionalization of care work.
- Transformative care as a regenerative force: the dignity and professionalization of care workers
- Regenerative leadership: how women rebuild trust and relational capital after a crisis
- Women leading organizational renewal: the company as a place of humanization
DEADLINES
- Call for papers opens: November 2026.
- Proposal submission (up to 800 words): Friday, May 14, 2027.
- Notification of acceptance: Tuesday, June 1, 2027.
- Full paper submission (up to 8,000 words) and end of early-bird registration: Thursday, July 15, 2027.
- March 1, 2027: Early bird registration
- May 16, 2027: Regular fee registration
- Conference: September 20–21, 2027.
Full papers submitted by July 15 will be the final version presented at the conference.
IESE is a dynamic community of scholars and practitioners who will welcome you to Barcelona, a traditional and welcoming Mediterranean city. It is a city with a great number of tourist attractions and a friendly atmosphere that will offer conference participants and their families plenty of opportunities to enjoy their stay here, over and above the academic program we are preparing for you.
We look forward to welcoming you to IESE in Barcelona!
