Interim narrative report for 2011
In the first half of the year, CEE Network for Gender Issues continues its systematic cooperation with women in SD parties and progressive NGOs from former socialist transition countries and Turkey as planned in the approved agreement of cooperation with Olof Plame Centre for the year 2011.
The focus of this year is on the development of social democratic gender sensitive active employment policies for four most vulnerable women groups: first job seekers, young highly educated women, rural women and women over 45. The preparations have been started during the Balkan SD women seminar in May in Skopje, where the venue, the agenda and the list of participants and experts were agreed. The questionnaire was prepared, the invitations to the party presidents and women party organization presidents and the questionnaire will be sent till June 25, and till July 15 2011 the answers to the questionnaires will be gathered and the list of participants and speakers finalized. Our main capacity building seminar, with the logistic support of the National Council of Women in Macedonia, has just taken place in Skopje from September 9 to 11, 2011.
Olof Plame Centre grant for 2011 enabling us systematic party by party support throughout the year, was strengthened also through developed cooperation with important international actors, such as Labor Party Westminster Foundation, FEPS, European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity, NDI, OSCE, ODIHR, PES Women SI W and UN Women, as well as with the governments of Montenegro, Albania and UNDP and the parliament of Turkey.
In January, CEE Network was invited to Skopje, to continue its cooperation with the NDI Belgrade regional office and regional office for SEE of Olof Plame Centre in the network of SD women politicians in the (25 participants, all women) The theme of this seminar was exchange of experience on creation of concrete gender equality programs and policies of their parties. This cooperation was continued in CEE Network party to party consultation work with women of SD parties in May 2011 in Romania, where we led the seminar on how to get SDP of Romania to seriously target women voters on the next elections (150 women 12 men), and in Serbia, where we consulted and helped women from democratic, progressive parties and NGOs to successfully lobby and get enacted serious quota of 30% for the less represented sex during the process of amending their electoral legislation (35 women).
End of February 2011, CEE Network Board Chair Dasa Silović, its Executive Director Sonja Lokar and Pia Locatelli, SIW President, met at the occasion of the regular yearly session of the UN CSW in New York. The theme of this CSW session was women in IT and education. They set up an activity plan of the cooperation of the Network and SIW for 2011 (8 participants). The main idea of possible joint action was to organize support for the progressive women in the starting Arab revolutions. The plan to organize a meeting with Arab women leaders and women from the SD parties and peace NGOs from the Balkans in May in Zagreb, did not materialize, but the Council Meeting of SIW was organized on this theme and will be held in Athens on June 28-29, 2011.Sonja Lokar was also invited to participate and she spoke at three crucial fringe events of this CSW session: at the SIW panel (45 participants, all women), at the panel dealing with violence against women in politics, co-organized by UNIFEM and Inter Parliamentary Union (35 participants, all women), as well as at the special meeting of the new leader of the UN Women Michele Bachelet with the group of most visible global NGOs (56 participants, all women).
In May 2011 in Skopje, in cooperation with LP Westminster Foundation CEE Network Ljubljana Office organized a seminar for women leaders and young SD women activists of the SD parties from the Balkans on the issue on how to develop collective and personal mentoring for young social democratic women. The participants agreed to develop a special toolkit for this work, in order to enable better cooperation of youth and women organizations in the parties on this issue, to establish a system of personal mentoring for promising young women activists, and to try to organize an international network of mentors and mentored young women and international exchange of mentorees. (27 participants, all women)
CEE Network continuous to successfully transfer the experience from our work to the most important international organizations dealing with political empowerment of women:
- On 8th of March 2011, European Institute for Gender Equality invited us to Budapest seminar named “Journalists and stakeholders consultations” These consultations were on how to serve the best the needs of the women in the CEE member states. We lobbied for such consultations also with the women human rights activists from the EU neighboring countries such as Ukrainem, Belarus, Moldova, and future member countries from the SEE. (23 women participants, 3 men)
- On March 23-26, 2011, UNDP and the Parliament in Turkey asked us to present the experience of Balkan women in developing parliamentary bodies for gender equality at the big international Convention on gender equality in Istanbul. (120 participants, 100 women, 20 men) - End of March, beginning of April 2011, OSCE invited us to train women candidates from three most important parties to develop their gender equality focused campaigns for fore coming local elections in Albania (PD, SP, Socialist movement for Integration) and from some smaller parties and NGOs) –( 56 participants, all women). The weak quota regulations were not respected everywhere, but women candidates we have trained have succeeded to get elected in many local communities, and we believe that it was because of the pressure that women developed also with our help, from the bottom up and wit the sincere support of the state president, the 30% quota was respected by two main competing parties and gave expected results in Tirana.
- In mid April 2011, NDI Tunisia invited us to present to the women activists of the first Tunisian parties and women human rights organizations the experience of the progressive Balkan women in transition process from 1990 to 2011, especially their efforts to engender their countries new constitutions and electoral and party legislation. (130 women, 12 men)
- In May 2011 we participated at the OSCE - ODIHR international Human Dimension Seminar in Warsaw on the issue of how to make women more powerful and visible within their parties, and we were invited in the expert group preparing a toolkit for voluntary positive measures and strategies that parties can develop in order to help women to start to work at equal footing with men in political parties. (89 participants women and 34 men)
- End of May, the government of Montenegro invited CEE Network to the big national conference on women in politics. As this conference took place in the moment when Montenegro was seriously amending its electoral legislation, we helped the participants to form an ad hoc coalition for the enactment of the well designed quota regulations and to set up a plan for lobbying for this solution the leaderships and the MPs of the crucial parties (DPS and SDP). The outcome of these activities will be known till the end of June 2011. (43 participants, all women)
- End of June 2011, European Commission set Network of Women in Decision making in Economy and in Politics, asked us to present our experience on how to persuade men to support the promotion of women to the top positions of political power.
- CEE Network was also able to keep its good cooperation with PES Women, contributing to its campaign on pensions for women (Statutory meeting of PESW in Brussels on May 24 – 35 participants women , 3 men) and with PES, FEPS and European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity (Forum Council meeting and PES Arab Task Force meeting in Brussels June 15, 2011. – 30 women, 35 men participants). We contributed to the development of the PES Arab Task Force, FEPS, S&D group and social democratic foundations joint action plan, forged in Brussels on June 15, 2011, on how to support Arab revolutions also from the point of view of gender equality, and we contributed to the regional seminar of the Forum on Progressive reform of economic governance pointing out the importance of inclusion of the aspect of the equal economic independence of women in the new economic strategies of the SD parties in the Balkans. This seminar was held in Zagreb, on June 18, 2011 (21 women, 36 men)
In all our activites in the first half of the year, we have phisically met 867 socal democratic oriented activists, political, Trade union and NGO high placed people. 111 of them were men.
Report prepared by Sonja Lokar, Executive director of the CEE Network and coordinator for the SEE
July 1, 2011
