Gender Network - report November 2005 - March 2006

FINAL OVERALL NARRATIVE REPORT
November 1, 2005 – MARCH 15, 2006

Due to the very short time we got to spend the grant, we had quite some problems to organize all necessary activities as planned in the project.
We succeeded to organize all the three train the trainer sub-regional seminars.

The first one took place in Tallinn (13.-15. 1. 2006) for the SD and NGO gender equality activists coming from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Estonia, Sweden, Latvia and Slovenia. In the last moment the problems caused by the dictatorship in Belarus prevented our participants from this country to take part in the seminar. The main outcomes of this seminar were:

The activists, man and women, coming from Russia, Ukraine and Moldova understood that there is a chance and a possibility to develop different activities in order to catch up with the EU gender equality best practices and legislation, using the experiences of women movements in the most developed EU countries as well as in the new EU member states.
After this seminar the participants form Moldova and Ukraine formed their new proposals for the cooperation with the CEE Network for Gender Issues in the future and we started to jointly plan the continuation of our work in Russia, concentrating on one region, so that we could use it as an example of what can be done also in such a big country. All three new projects are concentrating on training of trainers through the Women Can Do It training modules and manuals. These trainers will later on disseminate the know how on specific gender equality policies and capacity building for their development within the NGO-s, trade unions and SD party organizations on local and regional level.
In all these countries (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova) international support, especially from the EC, European Parliament as well as the PES, its Forum for Democracy and Solidarity and all SD Foundations is also needed very much in the future.
Participants have agreed that Ilute Lace, a well known NGO activist from Latvia, who is now a vice chair of the European Women’s Lobby will open the discussion in the EWL Secretariat on what this Lobby can do in order to help, much better than it has been done in the past, to the women’s movements in the future EU member states and in EU neighbouring countries.
Participants also agreed that CEE Network should send the conclusions of the seminar to the PESW and to the leader of the PES, in order to inform PES Women, male MEP-s and our Commissioners in the EC, that they should do their very best to establish special funding mechanisms for the gender equality work in these countries, and to include analytical following of the situation of women in these countries also in the mandate of the future Gender Equality Institute and of the new EU Roadmap to Gender Equality (2007-2013).

Detailed narrative report from this seminar is included in the special Narrative and Financial report from this seminar.

The second train the trainer seminar with the participation from the SD and some other progressive parties, NGO-s and Trade Unions, from Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, took place on February 10-12, 2006 in Novi Sad, Serbia. For the first time ever, we got some really highly placed male leaders from several political parties in the seminar. We are especially proud to get three representatives from the Kosovo SDP, coming in Serbia to discuss the issues of gender equality in the moment of very difficult negotiations of the new status of Kosova.
The most important outcomes of this seminar were:

Clear understanding that the EU as a community based on respect for all human rights and gender equality is still in the making, and that progressive women from the SEE region have to take active part in this process. The participants expressed their full support to all political parties and civil society actors within EU, fighting for higher and more binding standards and EU legislation on gender equality not only in the filed of labour relations, but also in the field of social, personal (abortion, sexual orientation) and political rights (equal political representation), in combating violence against women and trafficking in human beings.
In the process of the adjustment of their national legislation to the EU Acquis they stood for the solutions which are based on the practice of the most advanced EU member states and against every attempt to diminish their already exiting political, social, economic and personal rights to the minimal standards of the EU.
They requested direct cooperation between national bodies dealing with EU enlargement at the level of their governments and the parliaments, and already existing national parliamentary and governmental gender equality mechanisms.
They accepted the obligation to prepare policy programs, which clearly identify the needs and the priorities of the women in the inevitable process of globalization, Stabilization and Association or EU enlargement.
They protested against near total exclusion of the women from the ongoing post conflict negotiations in the Balkans and proposed the establishment (and latter on prepared a special project proposal) to the Forum for Democracy and Solidarity and to the PES to help them to establish a permanent regional women’s network for security and stability of this region. This network should, under the auspices of the Forum and PES, work on the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution No. 1325, and take active part in formal negotiations for the peaceful solution of all open issues in post conflict societies of the Western Balkans.
They suggested to strengthen the work of party activists with women in the rural areas, in the province and in the cities in order to help to profile much more informed and active women voters’ body. There is an urgent need fore international support for new massive campaigns of capacity building for getting women out to vote, to run and to learn how to work in politics. Absenteeism and diminished women’s activism in the region in the NGO-s as well as in the progressive political parties are dangerously strengthening all conservative and extreme political forces. Even more, these forces are taking over the issue and in many cases they are turning it into an open policy for the return to the very backward policies regarding women’s role in private and public life.
They saw an urgent need to strengthen party women’s organizations, to precise party programs regarding gender equality, to put in place concrete gender equality policies. In the Statutes stronger formal procedures protecting the right of the minority vote and internal party democracy are needed. They accepted to initiate or support gradual improvement of existing legal quota regulations and to transform step by step into the parity regulations.
They committed themselves to really open their party women organizations, parliamentary party factions, and ministries towards the initiatives for the improvement of gender equality which are coming from the civil society – from the experts, NGO-s, women activists in Trade Unions, to make gender equality a civilization value and the goal of all democratic parties, social associations and institutions, to make a special effort to develop cross-party cooperation of women and to build national political consensus around the issues of gender equality.
After quite a good legal framework and first gender equality mechanisms were put in place in all our countries, now it is prime time to work to implement this new legislation and put all these new mechanisms in meaningful action. They agreed to insist on capacity building of all implementers in the respective state institutions, on insuring financial and human resources for the implementation and monitoring of the new legal framework.
They gave their full support to the future work of the CEE Network for Gender Issues. It is of crucial importance for them to insure permanent exchange of information about good practices in the region and with women in the sister parties in the PES. They recommended that similar cooperation should be developed also with women in the EU party groups with progressive orientation.
They fully supported the continuation of the work of the SP GTF as a crucial tool for stable regional and national cooperation of the women in the parties, in the parliaments, governments, national NGO, TU women’s networks and with gender equality experts who are jointly working on improvement of gender equality nationally, regionally, in the EU and globally. They said that Gender Task Force should continue its work even after the phasing out of the Stability Pact for the SEE and that they expected expect that the EC would support this solution.
They requested from the EC to open a special department within the new EU Institute for Gender Equality, which will cover candidate, applicant and neighbouring countries as well as that the EC would, in its new Gender Equality Framework for 2007-2013, establish special financial tools in order to support capacity building for gender equality work also within all political parties, not stopping already existing support to the work of women NGO-s, TU women activists, women in parliaments and in governments. Special arrangements are needed to support their regional networks and crosscutting institutions (CEE Network, SP GTF).
They underlined that wherever this is not already done, they would initiate the establishment of the National Councils or Associations for direct cooperation with the European Women’s Lobby.

Detailed narrative report from this seminar with Conclusions and Agreements is included in the special Narrative and Financial Report from this seminar. Project proposal for the SEE SD Women’s Group working on post conflict issues will be translated in English and sent to you till the end next week.

The third train the trainer sub-regional seminar for the participants coming from the SD parties and NGO-s from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia, joint by representatives of SD parties from Austria,), Finland, Denmark, UK, Estonia and ECOSY, took place in Budapest, February 24-26, 2006. The participants were women and men, parliamentarians (MP-s, European Parliament Observers, MEP-s), or/and high level governmental or party officials This seminar was organized in the moment when Hungarian Socialists were finalizing their preparations for the general elections in April 2006, and when SD parties from the three future EU member states have to think already about their gender equality strategies for the new EU elections in 2008.The main outcomes from this seminar were:

The participants agreed about the need to focus SD party work more on indivisibility of women human rights (economic, social, personal, political) , on closing of the inequality gaps between men and women in labor market, on the issue of poverty, and to target specially women voters in all electoral campaigns.
Bearing in mind the fact that women everywhere – within the EU and in the countries to become new EU member states, are far more euro-skeptic then men, SD presentation of the EU should be credible, gender sensitive and should make women and their issues really visible.
The analysis of the European institutions from a gender perspective highlighted how and where in the European Parliament one can observe conservative backlash. Both, the European People’s Party and the New Women for Europe – new ultra conservative civil society movement in the making, stand for conservative values and stereotypes.
It was shown how ECOSY gender equality policy is far more radical than the one of the PES mother parties, and how conservatism is brought forward also by strong Catholic Church and gender insensitive trade unions (the case of Poland).
The overview of the research of visibility of activism on gender equality issues in the EU member states showed that the governments must be encouraged to influence the media to pay more attention to gender issues, more university gender experts should be educated, who are also knowledgeable in EU related fields. Decision makers at governmental level, in parties, parliaments and non-governmental organizations should train and educate much better their cadres dealing with the subjects of gender equality.
It was suggested to use a new strategy in our strife for gender equality: instead of confrontation, unity of men and women on new terms, accepting them as equal and different individuals.
The representatives from Romania, Croatia, Moldova and Bulgaria emphasized the general under-representation of women in either politics or in business. The laws on equal chances are introduced or in the very process of introducing in these countries thanks to international influences on national legislation systems or in some cases to EU’s accession process. Nevertheless there is a remarkable difference between the de iure and the de facto situations because of the different traditions, religions, and customs. The socialist and socialdemocratic parties introduced quotas of 25-30 % for women. One of their main tasks is to involve men in the topic to make together a better future. It was obvious that SD women from the different parties of the same country lack of practice of working and strategizing together.
The last part of the day was focusing on developing a campaign to mobilize women voters in an election (local, national or EU) All participants and speakers were haphazardly divided into three working groups. The task included todetermine methods, messages, slogans through which women voters could be addressed. The first group emphasized the social sensitivity of their politics and their motivation to make a change what society needs. They focused on traditional voters, intellectuals, as well as on rural, unemployed or discriminated women. They described short movies, they were full of ideas and creative slogans e.g.: “I am here for you” or “I count on you, you can count on me” or “Your vote is important. You are important”. The second working group came out with the idea of using a so-called campaign bus with famous women from their party. Direct contacts (like visiting schools, shopping malls, places where women turn up frequently), personalized letters, role models, telephone calls could influence the outcome of the elections favorably. Messages should be clear and short dealing with a wide range of topics, such as: employment, childcare, education, health, security or living conditions. The third group aimed at two big topics in their campaign namely: “more women in politics” and “more politics for women”. They intended to call for more and better jobs are available for women and better education for their children. In their proposed methods they would largely rely on the power of the media, although they would utilize jumbo posters on a large scale and personal contacts as well like door to door visits, walking and talking, leaflets, celebrated personalizing cards, forums or meetings.
Participants supported the e-campaign of PES Women starting on the first of March to stop 40,000 women taken this summer to Germany during the world cup, even forcefully for prostitution.
Istvan Gyarmati (Hungary, International Center for Democratic Transition) presented the region of Central and Eastern Europe in the global world context– showing the danger of new powerful and difficult to control political actors: media, mafias, NGO-s, terrorists. Women can be the engine of moving towards democratic values especially in traditional societies. One of the breakpoints can be women to alter traditionally hierarchical societies. He not only introduced his foundation and their work but areas through which joint activities could be done.
The participants finally agreed to work closely together with CEE Network, PES, SIW and other national and international progressive organizations.

Detailed narrative report from this seminar is included in its special Narrative and financial report.

We have tried to organize a workshop with the women parliamentarians in Turkey in January 2006, but we had to postpone it as all crucial participants had already other obligations. If we get the permission to use the remains of this grant also in 2006, we will organize this workshop most probably in the fall of 2006.
We succeeded to update our website included in the Forum’s web site with the information from our work on the regular basis. Never the less it would be good to intensify this work in the future.
Our Executive Board also decided to prepare a new CEE Network for Gender Issues booklet in 2006. This time we would like to publish a serial of short stories, written by our most visible activists and partners, who should deal with the most challenging gender equality issues of today. All preparatory work has been done: we defined the content; we made the list of potential authors; we asked them to send us their texts till February1, 2006. We also made a contract with the publisher. (See the outline for the book and publisher’s contract in the preliminary financial report). We planned to publish this book end of February 2006. It came out that we were too demanding. The authors could not give us their texts so quickly, so we had to postpone the printing of this book till the fall of 2006.

CEE Network for Gender Issues Ljubljana Office coordinated all Network’s cooperation work with the PES, PESW, European Forum, SIW, SD foundations (Westminster Foundation, Alfred Moser Foundation, Friedrich Ebert Foundation), our SD parties in different countries and with different international governmental and non governmental actors with the gender equality mandate in the SEE (UNIFEM, OSCE, Stability Pact Gender Task Force). Here is the short overview of this part of our work:

1.November 4-6, 2005, Kiev, Ukraine
Sonja Lokar and Nina Stushinkaya from Belarus, participated as the CEE Network regional trainers in the Youth Can Do It training for the SPU. This project has been funded by the LP Westminster Foundation grant.

2. November 9 -11, 2005, Brussels
Sonja Lokar took active part in the UNIFEM global Conference Owning Development. She presented the work of the CEE Network and PESW at this conference.

3. November 14-18, 2005, Prague
In her capacity of the Chair of the Stability Pact Gender Task Force Sonja Lokar took active part at the meeting of the Working Table 1 and Regional Table of the Stability Pact. The outcomes of this participation are three new gender equality projects for the SP GTF in 12 SEE countries supported with the donations from the Swiss and Austrian governments. One project will also include further gender equality capacity building for all SD parties in the region.

4. November 23, 2005, Brussels
Sonja Lokar in her capacity of the SG GTF Chair and author of the Roma Women Can Do It II project, now in implementation in 10 SEE countries, participated at the Public hearing of the Committee for Women Human Rights and Gender Equality on the issue: Roma Women in EU. (Costs were covered by the SP GTF)

5. November 27-December 1, Bucharest, Romania
Sonja Lokar participated at the national meeting of the Roma Women Can Do It II, national meeting of the Women Parliamentarians’ Exchange Project (both funded by the SP GTF donors) and at the special CEE Network meeting with the SDP Romania parliamentarians in the Romanian Parliament. The outcome of this last meeting was an agreement on the implementation of the Youth Can Do It project in Romania (Funded by the LP Westminster Foundation, to be implemented in the first half of 2006).

6. December 13-15, 2005, Novi Sad, Serbia
Sonja Lokar participated at the regional meeting of the Citizens’ Pact, biggest network of different NGO-s in the SEE region. She presented an analysis of the changing approach of the EU to the regional cooperation in SEE.

7. December 16-18, 2005, Sofia, Bulgaria
Sonja Lokar trained local women activists of the BSP in Borovec in cooperation with the Alfred Moser Foundation, and met with the leadership of the BSP women’s organization in Sofia.

8. January 12-15, 2006, Tallinn, Estonia
Sonja Lokar trained at the CEE Network sub-regional train the trainer seminar.

9. January 19-27, 2006, Tbilisi, Georgia
Sonja Lokar and Reet Laja (our partner form Tallinn Office) trained three groups of Georgian NGO activists on how to organize a parallel electoral campaign for the forthcoming local elections in Georgia. The project was entirely funded by the OSCE-ODIHR.

10. February 2-5, 2006, Palić, Serbia
CEE Network was a co-organizer (together with UNIFEM and SP GTF) of the second strategic conference of the democratic Serbian women activists, coming from the NGO-s, TU, political parties, academia, media, parliament and government. The first conference of this kind was in February 2000,also co-sponsored by UNIFEM and CEE Network, and prepared Serbian women activists for their crucial role in ousting of Milosević. Sonja Lokar presented the impact of the CEE Network and SP GTF work in the processes of EU accession of Slovenia, and worked as a facilitator of the discussions regarding future strategies of the Serbian women’s movement.

11. February 10-12, 2006, Novi Sad. Olof Palme CEE Network sub- regional seminar for SEE region in Novi Sad, Serbia

12. February 13- 15, Skopje, Macedonia
Sonja Lokar led Macedonian national conference of the SP GTF Roma Women Can Do It II project and met with OSCE staff and male Roma party leaders.

13. February 16-17, Belgrade, Serbia
Sonja Lokar officially visited new head of the OCSE Mission, newly established Serbian governmental gender equality mechanism and in the framework of the SP GTF project Women parliamentarians’ Exchange led a discussion of Serbian women parliamentarians about EU policies on balancing family and professional obligations.

14. February 20, 2006, in Ljubljana, Slovenia
Sonja Lokar organized public presentation of the yearly work of the CEE Network for Gender Issues in the framework of the regular meeting of the Coalition for Parity.

15.February 23, 2006, Brussels, Belgium
Sonja Lokar represented CEE Network at the regular PES Women meeting.

16. February 26- March 3, 2006
Sonja Lokar represented CEE Network at the yearly meeting of the UN Commission on Status of Women, took active part in the SIW panel, and worked as an expert-advisor to the Slovenian and Rwanda governmental delegations which co-promoted the Draft Resolution on Special Reporter for Elimination off Discrimination Against Women in Laws.

Final Overall Narrative Report was prepared by
Sonja Lokar,
SEE coordinator of the CEE Network for Gender Issues
Ljubljana, March 15, 2006