Lobbying women interests in Belarus

The operation of the National Plan on gender equality (2001-2005) is terminating this year. The PA “WIDM” in collaboration with other Belarusian women organizations is currently monitoring the effectiveness of the National Plan implementation and formulating recommendations that are to be included into the coming Plan (2006-2010). Therefore, the PA “WIDM” has organized and conducted a number of seminars, namely:

1.      Seminar “Women and economy” was carried out in 2 phases:

·        Conduction of the seminar “Lobbying businesswomen’s interests: recommendations for government programmes” on May 20, 2005 in Minsk International Educational Center. The seminar took place within the framework of the Second Forum of Belarusian Businesswomen. Among the participants of the seminar were businesswomen, research workers and representatives of the government.

·        Work of the focus group on the problems of women poverty, women discrimination on labour market was carried out on June 9, 2005 in Minsk International Educational Center. Experts, research workers and representatives of women NGOs participated in the focus group.  

In the course of the discussion its participants defined the obstacles that businesswomen come across in Belarus, monitored the implementation of the National Plan on gender policy realization, and worked out the proposals to be included into the coming National Plan.  

            The participants of the seminar unanimously admitted that involvement of women in business could help to overcome poverty, unemployment and discrimination on labour market.  

2.      Seminar “Violence against women: legal, institutional and cultural problems” took place on June 30, 2005 in the conference hall of Labour Department. More then 30 people were present at the seminar – experts from Minsk and the regions, representatives of women NGOs and the government.

The objective of the seminar was to work out proposals for the “Women and violence” section of the new National Plan on gender policy.

The participants of the seminar defined the problems that hindered the implementation of the Plan, estimated the results and achievements over the last 5 years and worked out recommendations for the new National Plan.

3.      Seminar “The development of national mechanisms on women status improvement” took place on July 28, 2005 in the conference hall of the hotel “Express”. The objectives of the seminar were to work out proposals for the “National mechanisms” section of the new National Plan on gender policy realization and to examine the draft law “On gender equality”. Two expert reports preceded the work of the focus groups:

·        Irina Chutkova, Head of Population, Gender and Family Policy Department of Labour Department delivered the speech “The development of national mechanisms on women status improvement in the Republic of Belarus”.

·        Lyudmila Petina, the Co-chairperson of the PA “WIDM” spoke about the role of national mechanisms in gender equality policy realization.

       The closing meeting - the round table “Strategies of gender equality policy realization in Belarus” - will take place on the 30^th of September. The objectives of the meeting will be to present and discuss the proposals and recommendations for the new National Plan on gender policy (2006-2010) that have been worked out during the seminars.