WUNRN
See Below: Gender Excerpts from
European Commission TURKEY PROGRESS REPORT 2013 - Enlargement Strategy and Main
Challenges.
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The European Union (EU) Commissioner for
Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy Stefan Füle (4rd L) and Turkish Family and
Social Affairs Minister Şahin (C) pose after yesterday’s conference. AA
photo
The
European Union (EU) Commissioner for
Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy, Stefan Fule,has called on
“We invite
Şahin, who also had a one-on-one meeting with Füle before the meeting,
said the country’s battle with gender inequality was a long-running one, vowing
to keep making women lives’ better as the center of the government’s policies.
“We refuse all kinds of discrimination. We have internalized a management
understanding that puts the woman at the center, that improves the quality of a
woman’s life and stands beside the woman in her dignified struggle for life.
And we took this as a roadmap,” she said.
Şahin also stressed the government had three priorities regarding the
issue: equal access to education, health, and workforce.
However, a point that was not addressed by Şahin, women’s participation in
politics, was the issue most strongly emphasized in Füle’s speech.
Addressing women who gathered to discuss the level of progress in women’s
rights on the third year of the Istanbul Convention, known as the Council of Europe
Convention against Domestic Violence, Füle underscored that the country was
lagging behind its EU member counterparts in women’s representation at all
levels, despite the limited progress.
“First,
Füle asserted encouragement of women’s presence in local governments required
extra attention as only 1 percent of the municipalities in the country had a
female mayor.
Moves promising: Füle
According to the EU commissioner,
“The gender gap in access to education is narrowing but it remains sizeable in
some regions, especially in the Southeast. Female early school leaving rate
remains high, still four times higher in
Meanwhile in terms of labor policies, the country’s focus should be on
improving women’s employment in rural areas, while holding on to policies to
raise their participation in the workforce around 30 percent across the
country, Füle stressed.
However, the commissioner did not paint
Hailing the adoption of the Law on the Protection of Family and Prevention of
Violence in March of last year, he said; “Recent developments in your country
show what can be achieved with political will, courage and dialogue.”
Naming a few such developments, he said the fourth judicial reform package
adopted in April, ongoing efforts to reach a solution of the long-lasting
Kurdish issue and an array of reforms announced as the “democracy package,”
demonstrated the progress.
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http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/key_documents/2013/package/brochures/turkey_2013.pdf
2013 PROGRESS
REPORT
EUROPEAN
COMMISSION
COMMUNICATION
FROM THE COMMISSION
TO THE EUROPEAN
PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL
Turkey
Enlargement Strategy and Main Challenges 2013-2014
...............................................................................................
Legislation and action plans continued to be
implemented in the field of women’s rights and gender equality. The
authorities, in particular the Minister responsible, took a strong line in
addressing domestic violence. However, further sustained work is needed to turn
legislation into political, social and economic reality. Gender equality,
including access to education and the labour market, political representation,
combatting violence against women (including honour killings) and early and
forced marriages, remains a major challenge for
On children’s rights, greater effort is needed
to further improve enrolment rates, in particular for girls, throughout the
period of compulsory education and address absenteeism and dropping-out.
Further sustained efforts are needed to address regional disparities in education.
The same applies to combatting child labour and
improving health, administrative capacity and coordination.
Substantial efforts are needed to effectively
guarantee women’s rights and protect vulnerable groups, including children and
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, from abuse, discrimination
and violence. There is a need for concrete legal and practical steps to address
violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender
identity........
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