(BRUSSELS) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was among the high-level participants at a conference Thursday on women's role in world affairs, though the EU organiser complained that others had chosen to stay away.

Ahead of International Women's Day on Saturday, Rice along with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko were due to take part in the event in Brussels.

"Too often women's potential as peacemakers, as mediators, as the rebuilders of shattered communities, is not harnessed," European External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner told the meeting.

"All humanity loses out if women are not empowered to play their part in building stability in our insecure world. The challenges to human security cannot be tackled without the contribution women make," she added as she opened the event.

Ferrero-Waldner nonetheless regretted that although she had invited 27 women foreign ministers throughout the world, "unfortunately very few have come".

Among the VIPs taking part, along with Rice and Tymoshenko, were Finnish President Tarja Halonen, former Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga, a dozen female foreign ministers -- from Andorra, Iceland, Liberia, Morocco and elsewhere -- World Food Programme Executive Director Josette Sheeran, World Bank vice-president Ana Palacio, Irish Nobel Peace prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire and several national deputies.

Rice, in Brussels for a NATO foreign affairs ministers meeting, was due to make her speech in the afternoon.

Meanwhile the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, was patting itself on the back as a new additional to its ranks of 27 policy commissioner givs it the highest level of female participation ever, with a third of the places now held by women.

That ratio, according to the official statistics bureau Eurostat, puts it in line with the one in three European managers who are women.

The statistics office also pointed out a more fundamental statistic for women in Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia who, it said, have the lowest life expectancy in the 27-nation bloc at 76.2-76.3 years.

France and Spain registered the highest female life expectancies in the EU at 84.4 years.

Overall European girls born in 2006 can expect to live six years longer than their male counterparts, with the average life expectancy across the bloc put at 80.9 years for women against 74.6 years for men.

Women Stabilizing an Insecure World Conference 6 March 2008

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