WUNRN
Czech Republic - Chamber of Experts
on Gender Equality Being Created
PHOTO: pixabay.com
Prague - August 25, 2014 - A chamber of experts
dedicated to the issue of equality beween men and women is being created in the
Czech Republic. The body will bring together qualified people from academia and
from various specialized areas of practice to focus on the issue.
The chamber should begin functioning
within about a year. Its purpose is to guarantee the expertise of the advice
and opinions that could be used by the Government or ministries in this area.
Eva Kavková, vice-chair of the Czech
Women's Lobby (CWL), announced the creation of the chamber today. The CWL has
received a grant from Norwegian funds for the project.
"Practically anyone can pass
herself or himself off as a gender expert these days. While for other
professions the qualifications are clearly dictated, in the gender area there
is a great deal of abuse here. The impulse to establish this chamber was the
fact that while gender issue expert positions exist for EU-funded projects, the
implementers of those projects have frequently avoided actually hiring experts.
Instead, in order to meet the requirements, they simply appoint a woman to the
job," Kavková pointed out.
People from academia and nonprofit
organizations say gender equality should be reflected in various measures and
plans for urban development as well as in public budgets. The creation of the
chamber will be coordinated by the Sociological Institute of the Academy of
Sciences, the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University in Prague, and the
Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University in Brno.
The new association will include experts
focused on the labor market, LGBT rights, migration, minorities, violence and
sexual harassment, women's rights and work-life balance. Kavková says the rules
for membership in the chamber, its registration conditions and other
requirements will now be drafted.
The preparations will take several
months. The CWL currently brings together 28 academic workplaces, pro-family
organizations, and women's organizations.
The group has been awarded money from
the Norwegian funds for a project called "We Defend Women's Rights".
Kavková said the group received CZK 8 million and is providing 10 % of the
project costs on its own.
CWL will use the financing to establish
the chamber and to advocate for legislative measures supporting birth
assistants, an outreach campaign on gender equality, and women's political
participation, as well as holding the country's second-ever Women's Congress.
The first such congress was held in the Czech Republic last June.
Last year's congress resulted in a
resolution that was communicated to politicians with demands for expanding the
country's legal options regarding flexible work hours, improving the situations
of self-employed people, and increasing the capacity of nursery schools. Women
from all over the country should gather in Prague on 20 June 2015 for a second
time.
The main theme of next year's congress
should be the media and women's issues. More than half of Czech society is
actually female.
It remains difficult, however, for women
to make their way into top management positions in business or politics there.
Only one-fifth of the seats in the Czech lower house are occupied by women.
Women also earn, on average, salaries
worth 20 % less than those earned by men, and subsequently receive smaller
pensions after retirement. In their old age they are therefore more at risk of
poverty than men are.
During their economically active years,
women are more likely to have trouble finding work in the Czech Republic. This
is despite the fact that more women than men are college graduates.
ČTK, translated by Gwendolyn
Albert