EUROPE: For Women, East Is Backward East
Women's rights organisations in Eastern Europe say they are struggling to overcome centuries-old gender stereotypes.
Their experience is backed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual Gender Gap report released last week. Of the top 15 countries among 134 surveyed, ten where the gender gap was lowest were in Western Europe.
The highest Eastern European state, Latvia, was in 18th place. The majority of Eastern European countries did not make the first third of the list. Few had improved their rankings since 2009.
That report came just a week after a survey in Hungary by the Mercer polling group showed that women in managerial positions were paid on average 30 percent less than men doing the same work.
And it came as a coalition of Czech women's rights groups attacked the country's government at the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in Geneva over its failure to address key women's rights issues.
Women's rights activists in the region say gender inequality and discrimination is worse in Eastern Europe than in the West, and put this down partly to a regional history of centuries of patriarchal societies up until communism where, despite regime propaganda to the contrary, women continued to be discriminated against.
But even after the end of communism, the situation has not improved as swiftly as in the West, many say.
'A general notion of gender stereotypes exists which has become embedded through history and is being repeated today,' Vilana Pilinkaite, project manager at the Centre for Equality Advancement (CEA) in Vilnius, Lithuania, told IPS. 'It is rooted in ideas of 19th century nationalism where the discourse was that a woman's role was just to be a mother and produce and raise a good patriotic child. This remains to an extent today.'
The situation is the same in other neighbouring states.
'Poland is a traditional society with a stereotypical division of roles. Many people, especially in smaller cities and villages, would support the view that women should act as mothers and wives and men should be 'heads of the family',' Malgorzata Tarasiewicz, director at the women's rights group Network of East-West Women in Poland told IPS.
Politicians face criticism for not promoting women's rights, and setting a poor example in female representation in their own governments and parliaments.
There was outrage among women's rights activists following parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic earlier this year when a new cabinet was formed which did not include a single female minister. In the Slovak parliament women make up just 15 percent of the MPs. The figure in Romania and Hungary is 11 percent.
In some parts of Eastern Europe the Church is blamed for stifling progress on women's rights. In strongly Catholic Slovakia there have been repeated attempts by the governing coalition Christian Democrat party to introduce legislation which would severely limit access to abortion.
Last month in Lithuania, where the current conservative government is seen to be closely linked to the Catholic Church, the health ministry says it has drawn up legislative amendments which would allow doctors to refuse to carry out abortions on moral grounds. The move reportedly came after talks with the Vatican.
'This is a signal that this is the first step towards banning abortion,' Pilinkaite told IPS.
In Poland, which has among the world's strictest abortion laws, the government is widely perceived to be reluctant to engage in any women's rights issues because of the Church.
'The Polish government as well as the Polish president try to be careful with their support for women's rights because of the strong political position of the Catholic Church which has well-known views on women.
'The present Polish government is not supporting women. There is also no adequate support regarding policies and budget for opposing violence against women, to finance women's health issues. And the Polish minister for anti- discrimination is busy on some aspects of discrimination but not on women's issues,' Tarasiewicz said.
One of the most common equality problems among the region remains labour and pay discrimination, according to rights groups.
The EU-wide pay gap between women and men is on average 18 percent, according to official EU figures. But the figure is higher in many Eastern European countries -- jumping to 20 percent in Slovakia and Lithuania, and 25 percent in the Czech Republic. Some independent surveys in selected jobs have shown differences of more than a third.
Gender studies experts also point to vertical labour 'segregation' between men and women where men are usually in senior positions with the highest salaries, and to horizontal segregation where women are in jobs and occupations associated with women and that on average pay less than jobs in sectors where there are more men.
'One of the major problems is that many men don't believe that there is any discrimination at all so they are unwilling to fight to change anything,' Katerina Cervena of the Czech NGO Human Rights League, which led the delegation of Czech women's rights groups to the UN in Geneva last week, told IPS.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service