Gender Network - report Seminar Macedonia June 2007

"HOW CAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATS IMPROVE GENDER EQUALITY
EVEN WHEN IN OPPOSITION?"

Seminar for SD leaders in Skopje, Macedonia
June 22-24, 2007
CEE Network for Gender Issues & Karl Renner Institute

Seminar impementation report

Background
Macedonia has the strongest and the best interconnected new political women’s movement in the SEE. This movement started at the beginning of the nineties of the 20th century, in the form of the new peace movement. It was transformed into the NGO movement to help refugees and other victims of the wars in the Balkans, but after 1995 (after the 4th UN Beijing Conference on Women) it was reshaped into a political movement for all women’s human rights. It started from the civil society,( main actor: NGO named SOZM), but very soon, with the support of the CEE Network for Gender Issues and latter on, from 2000, also with the support of the Stability Pact Gender Task Force, (main actors: Macedonian Women’s Lobby, SDUM Women, LDP) it started to bring together also women activists and politicians from practically all NGO-s, all political parties and TU. From the beginning this movement had a strong multinational character and regardless of the temporary troubled relations between two biggest national groups in this movement it always kept this multinational character.

Thanks to this movement, Macedonia is one of the SEE countries with the best record in improving the position of women in politics, (it jumped from 6.8% of women MP-s in 2000 to 30% in 2006, and from 4.2% in 1999 to 22.4% of women councilors in 2005, from the government without any woman minister in 1992, to the actual government with a woman vice prime minister and three women ministers). But at the same time this is one of the countries with the most serious set backs in economic and social position of the women, (with growing shares of women in illiteracy, unemployment, in grey and black economy, poverty, and in ill health).

Macedonia had SD/LDP/DUI coalition in power between 2002 and 2006. This was the period of the best results regarding the improvement of the status of women in politics and of some serious actions of women parliamentarians of all parties to diminish the neo-liberals pressure on Macedonian welfare state (family leave, pensions, prevention of breast and uterus cancer). In the moment when newly bred social democratic women politicians could have started to make a crucial change in favor of economic and social status of women in Macedonia, the voters sent the SDUM and the DUI in opposition.

The central question the seminar dealt with was: Can these two parties do anything to improve the status of women even in this new situation, what can they do and how?

The goals of the seminar were:

• Help these two parties to better understand the relevance of gender equality policies for their social affirmation and growth of their political power.
• Help SDSM and DUI to set concrete strategies for their gender equality policies while in opposition
• Help these two parties to come closer in working on these issues with identical insight in the EU SD standards and best practices
• Help both parties to develop better communication with cross party gender equality networks in the parliament and in the civil society, with their members, voters and media

Partners of the project and their tasks were:

• Karl Renner Institute (supervision)
• SDP Women from Labor Party in the Netherlands (sending one expert)
• CEE Network for Gender Issues (preparing agenda and methodology for the seminar sending one expert, moderating the seminar and narrative reporting),
• SDSM (main partner, organizer of the seminar at the spot, selecting 4 participants from the party, one from one NGO of their choice, one from the TU of their choice, preparing analytical materials in advance)
• DUI (invited to participate with 4 participants from the party, one NGO from their choice, 1 TU leader from their choice, preparing their own analytical materials in advance)

Participants:

• KRI - Martin Janata
• LP of the Netherlands - expert Kim Turk
• CEE Network - expert - Sonja Lokar

It was foreseen that the two parties will send 6 participants each.

• Party leader or his/her deputy (2)
• Leader of the party women’s organization (2)
• First bench MP from each party (2)
• Mayor (woman if possible) from one local community (2)
• Leader of the selected NGO (2)
• Leader or women’s TU network leader of the selected TU (2)

According to the three participants’ lists, there were 20 participants altogether from Macedonia.
Both parties respected the requests for the structure of participants, but there were slight changes each day. Mostly male participants floated, but also the president of the SDSM could stay only on Friday afternoon.

Technicalities and venue:
There were some traveling delays from Ljubljana (Sonja Lokar) and Vienna (Martin Janata), but all in all we kept the agenda and the timing of the seminar.

The seminar was professionally organized by SDSM Women’s Forum leader Cvetanka Ivanova – who was absent from the seminar due to the death in her family. The seminar was held in the premises of the Karpos Hotel in the centre of Skopje. All technical equipment was at hand: simultaneous translation equipment, PC and power point beamer, flip chart. The seminar was implemented in four languages: English, Macedonian, Albanian and Serbian with very professional simultaneous translation.

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Agenda of the seminar

Friday, June 22,2007

• Arrival of participants till 17.30 PM
• 17.30 -18.00 Opening and setting of the agenda: Greetings: Sonja Lokar on behalf of the CEE Network for Gender Issues and Karl Renner Institute, Austrian Ambassador in Macedonia, ADA program officer in Skopje, secretary general of the DUI and Radmila Sekerinska, SDUM President – opening speech.
• 18.00 – 18.30 State of art: Situation of Macedonian and Albanian women in Macedonia and gender equality policy of the parties in the times of power. - 18.30 – 19.30
  Comparisons: SD party gender equality policies in the Netherlands and in Slovenia when the parties were/are in power. Questions and answers.
• 20.00 Dinner

Saturday, June 23, 2007:

• 09.00 – 10.00 Main challenges of the new situation – Priorities of the women; what is the government doing or not doing with regard of these priorities - discussion;
• 10.00-11.00 What should be done by SD regarding the first priority?
• 11.00-11.30 Coffee Break
• 11.30-12.30 What should be done regarding the second priority?
• 12.30.-13.30 What should be done regarding the third priority?
• 13.30- 15.00 Lunch break
• 15.00 – 17.00
• Examples of best practice in the Netherlands and Slovenia, what and how things could be done when SD are/were in opposition– questions and answers, discussion
• 17.00-17.30 Coffee break
• 17.30-19.00 – work in two groups on the following issues – experts from abroad serve as moderators of the discussion and help to form the conclusions – each group nominates a reporter:
  - How to improve party gender equality policy?
  - How to keep initiative within cross-party gender equality bodies – parliamentary commission on gender equality, women’s parliamentary caucus, Macedonian Women’s Lobby?
  - How to gain more visibility for the party gender equality politics in public?
  - How to get media attention for party gender equality initiatives?
  - Can the two parties work on this issue together? How?
• 19.30 Dinner

Sunday, June 24, 2007:

• 09.00 – 11.00 Reports from the two groups, discussion and exchange of good practice
• 11.00-11.30 Coffee break
• 11.30-12.00 Agreements and conclusions
• 12.30-13.30 Lunch
• 14.00 Departure of participants

The agenda was respected.

Materials handed out before, at the seminar or after the seminar:

• SDSM and DUI prepared the materials in written: Women’s Club of the SDSM – overall report,; Action Plan 2007-2011 of the DUI Women’s Forum).
• Kim Turk prepared a power point presentation on the state of art of women and Labor Party women in the Netherlands
• SD of Slovenia: Party Plan for the improvement of Gender Equality and Program of the SD WF from 2001-2005 – sent to both women party organizations after the seminar by e-mail
• Kim Turk power point on best practices in the Netherlands
• Sonja Lokar text on best practices in Slovenia, sent after the seminar by e-mail
• Slovenian national plan for improvement of reproductive health prevention named Zora - sent by e-mail after the seminar
• Antidicrimination Laws from Bulgaria and Croatia and draft of the antidiscrimination Law from Serbia sent to both organizations after the seminar
• CEE Network booklet: Our first hundred years
• CEE Network booklet: From quota to Parity
• SP GTF Report on Women Can Do It II project in 10 SEE Countries in 2002

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The outcomes of the seminar

Analysis of the state of affairs
New situation: SD parties are in opposition, there is a post electoral shock of SD women, an undeclared but effective conservative backlash is going on against all former achievements of the Macedonian women’s movement and former government.

• SD women of both SD parties can be proud of all the results they have achieved in the period when their government was in power. Their parties acted as the main promoters of political empowerment of women and their women MP-s carried the biggest burden in promoting women interests and rights in labor and preventive health legislation, child rights and in the fight against prostitution and trafficking.
• Women in both parties also became very well organized, got a full support of their leaderships, especially Albanian women overcame the lack of trained activists who could take over political positions in the party and in the public offices. Albanian women have specific problems - more conservative tradition - based on the Islam and life in rural areas, bigger gender gap in education, employment and political literacy (higher voting absenteeism, more family voting).
• Women activists and MP-s from both parties also used to be very active in all joint organizations of the Macedonian new women’s movement: in Macedonian Women’s Lobby, in the Women MP-s Club in the parliament and in the lobbying for the establishment of the Commission on human rights and equal opportunities in the parliament.
• New governmental coalition has much more conservative ideas on the role of the women in the society. It promotes traditional role of the women and opens possibilities for the bigger role of the church in political life, culture, social work and education. It does not attack directly women’s better representation in decision making bodies, but it promotes token women ministers, and while replacing 1700 public officials and servants on the bases of political loyalty, it pushed women out from middle and minor positions of power and replaces them by less qualified men. Media does not promote women in politics – there, they are pictured as a décor, shown on the TV, but not asked for their opinion. The work on the Law against discrimination has been stopped. All good legislation passed in the former mandate of the parliament is not implemented – Labor law – adds for the jobs are still gender bias, gender pay gap is even growing; the law on gender equality, the law on prevention of breasts’ and uterus’ cancer are dead letters on paper. The criminals who have been busted and sentenced for trafficking have been released and illegal brothels in Struga were reopened.
• The bodies that women activists have jointly created in order to promote women human rights (Macedonian Women’s Lobby, parliamentary commission on equal opportunities, Women’s MP’s Club, have lost their impetus. Partly because they stayed in the hands of the woman leader who joined the governmental coalition, partly because SD women are still in the post-electoral defeat shock, partly because nearly two thirds of the women MP-s were elected for the first time and not all of them came to the parliament on the wind of the Macedonian women’s movement, and they do not all have enough strong feelings or knowledge on gender equality issues. It also seems that somebody deliberately works on destroying the strongest NGO-s players in the Macedonian women’s movement, by launching the rumors of their political partiality and affiliation with the SD parties, or by mounting internal fights for power within these organizations.
• There is also the danger that SD women became the victims of their own success: women’s party organizations might slip in organizational self satisfaction and rigidness; much more SD women are now in the parliament and in the municipality councils than before, but they might think that they did not need to work for their next reelection, or they might forget about their obligation to work on gender equality issues, or they might not be aware of the need of cross-party women’s cooperation on gender equality issues. There is a danger to reduce the whole strife for women’s human rights to the fight for equality in political representation of women, which in the eyes of the women voters could look like the fight for their own personal positions if it is not combined with the campaigns for concrete interests of the majority of the women. NGO participant and TU activist stressed the need of closer cooperation between women in SD political parties with the women NGO and TU activists, and the need of working hand in hand on the spot, with the women in local communities, on concrete every day life issues (discrimination at labor market, education, employment, poverty, health…). There is also a danger that all women’s work in SD parties will be reduced to so called gender equality issues and they will have a problem to define themselves as accomplished politicians who have a strong and qualified opinion on all political issues important for the people (democracy, corruption, ecology, economic development, EU enlargement). Women workers and citizens in Macedonia do not even know about their legally funded economic, social, health care or personal rights. It is great that SD women work so much across party lines, but this makes much more difficult for the SD women to demonstrate to the voters their specific SD ideological and program approach.

Short reports from the work in two working groups

Insight in the specific needs of the women in both parties

SDSM reported about the outcomes from its working group
SDSM is the party with the longest and most successful tradition of gender equality work and the oldest women’s party organization. Never the less the work of the women’s party organization has to be strengthened, made more concrete and women party activists and politicians made more visible.

• Women’s clubs should take up an active role in supporting further development of the party democracy and help the women to decide for self -nominations and actively nominate and train the women for the party functions on all levels in the forthcoming party elections.
• They need to get a special budget line in the party budget for the work of their women’s organization, so that they can employ gender officer and PR officer for gender equality and get initial funding for their activities within the party and in public.
• They need to push their requests from 30% of quota for less represented sex to the request for parity in the party statute as well as in the legislation and make this request public.
• They have to work for a special commitment and concrete action plan of the party executive to raise the share of women mayors to at least 30% at the next local elections.
• They would like to have joint activities with the women of DUI in the field of capacity building of women councilors and women mayors as well as a concrete agreement how they will mutually support and reinforce each other’s specific initiatives in gender equality policies.

DUI reported about the outcomes from their working group
DUI is a young party which needed some time to organize its women’s organization, to spread it everywhere where the party has local organizations and to train their women activists.

• They need to put their women’s organization in action, making it work on the issues specifically urgent for Albanian women – rural women, less educated, more traditional, more inclined not to vote or to be dragged in family voting.
• They will define their three national priorities and encourage each local club to do the same for its specific environment.
• They need direct contact and more cooperation with EU sister women’s party organizations.
• They will try to get additional funding for their capacity building work in rural areas from international partners (SD Foundations and CEE Network)
• They would like to cooperate with SDSM women on the issue of further political empowerment of women and in exchange of best practice of women mayors.

Definition of priorities

Participants enumerated the following 13 possible priorities:
Passing of the antidiscrimination Law; Women’s rights to education; Campaign for the changing of the image of women in media; Further activities on political empowerment of women: more women mayors campaign, capacity building of women voters and women councilors; Campaign against violence in the schools; Campaign for the implementation of the Law to prevent breasts’ and uterus’ cancer; Education of young people for political work; Campaign and passing of the law against violence in family; Amendments on the Law on Family – especially the status of women in the process of divorce and after divorce; Campaign for the improvement of the status of rural women; Campaigns targeting specific groups of women: single mothers, older women, young women; Passing of the legal provisions or a special law against the mobbing.

After a lively debate the following three priorities for the future work of the SD women were singled out:

• Campaign for the implementation of the Law to prevent breasts’ and uterus’ cancer;
• Passing of the antidiscrimination Law
• Further activities on political empowerment and improvement of equal political representation of women

The first campaign will open the issue of the good law, passed by the government where both parties had a major role. This law has to be implemented in practice. This campaign will make the pressure on the conservative government to come forward with the concrete plan of activities for its implementation. Slovenian governmental project Zora will be used as one of the models for the preparation of the SD women’s proposals of possible solutions.

The idea of antidiscrimination law got stuck before the last general elections. This Law makes a part of the EU enlargement legal harmonization package. Similar laws have been passed in Slovenia, Bulgaria and Croatia, very good draft of such a law has been prepared in Serbia. CEE Network will get all these examples of the antidiscrimination laws and send them to both women’s party organizations’ leaders in order to help SD women in Macedonia to start the work on this legal initiative.

New initiatives for more equal representation of women in politics will be in the first step centered to the leaderships of both parties (initiative for parity (50/59) and the inclusion of at least 30% of women mayors elected on next local elections), and made publicly visible. This initiative will be than directed also towards Macedonian Women’s Lobby and Women MP-s’ Club in the parliament in order to get the momentum from civil society and exert the same pressure on other political parties.

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Conclusions

• The work on these three priorities will serve to the SD women in both parties for taking over the initiative in the parliament and in the Macedonian women’s movement, as well as for making visible the differences between conservative, liberal and SD approaches to gender equality and for invigorating and making publicly visible the work of both SD women party organizations.
• Women organizations of both parties will inform each other of their specific priorities and publicly support each other’s initiatives.
• All these initiatives will be presented to the party leaderships in order to make gender equality issues one of the most important parts of the overall party work in opposition.
• Women voters in Macedonia are becoming profiled enough to be able to decide the next local and general elections. Only the parties which will work for their interests and offer concrete gender equality policies in tune with the needs of women voters will be able to profit from the results of decade long awareness raising work of all actors in the modern Macedonian women’s movement.

Outcomes of the participants' evaluation forms

At the closing of the seminar, the participants were given an anonymous evolution form. 11 evaluation forms were filled out. The participants answered to the following questions:

1. Was the agenda of the seminar well chosen?

• Optimal 6
• Well 5
• Badly 0

2. What is NEW that you have learned at this seminar:

• Experiences from the SD women's work in the Netherlands and in Slovenia: 8
• How to start an initiative for amending the legislation and lead a campaign for a specific gender equality issue when the party is in opposition 3
• A lot of different things 1

3. What could have been done better?

• No answer: 3
• Everything was OK : 2
• Written materials should be prepared in advance: 2
• Our male colleagues should have been present all the time: 1
• We would need more workshops and elaboration of practical examples: 1
• More women participants also from other political parties: 1
• We would need more a seminar on economic empowerment of women: 1

4. If you evaluate the work of the trainers- 5 for excellent and 1 for very bad, how would you evaltuate..

• KIM TURK: 7 times 5, 4 times 4
• SONJA LOKAR: 11 times 5

5. If we organize another seminar in the future, what would you like to learn about?

• How to better cooperate between our two parties in the framework of common ideological and program platform 4
• How to make work party women organization, activists' capacity building and inclusion of gender issues in party program and party Statute 2
• How to work with men on gender issues 1
• Capacity building in gender equality of all potential leaders – party activists, councilors, mayors, MP-s 1
• How to develop the work with the constituencies on specific gender equality issues (voting process, trafficking, reproductive health, agriculture, education) : 3

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Reporting: Sonja Lokar, SEE coordinator of the CEE Network for Gender Issues
Ljubljana, June 28, 2007