A very important part of the Ozone Project is gender equality. We discussed its systemic implementation with our gender equality expert Minja Damjanović.
IREI: What is the role of local governments in achieving gender equality in comparison to higher government levels? Which government level is the most significant and active in this regard?
DAMJANOVIĆ: Extremely important! Above all, for two key reasons: because local institutions, such as centres for social work and city/municipal administrations, are in the vast majority of cases the first places we go to for advice and assistance when we need it, whether we want to open a business, exercise the right to assistance or receive some type of medical service. Local communities create services and set the conditions for accessing those services, and in situations of limited financial and other capacities, it is necessary to use the available funds to produce the best results. For this to be possible, local communities need to know the exact needs and ways in which women in local communities live, so they can be offered maximum support. It is important to know that those needs are different from the needs of men, primarily because of the different roles men and women have in BiH society. If kindergartens do not have enough places or are too expensive, women are usually those who, as a rule, stay at home, which ultimately directly affects their economic stability and independence. Namely, women take longer or shorter breaks in their careers, i.e., they have fewer hours of paid work thereby making less money and consequently receiving smaller pensions. Also, if kindergartens were open in the afternoon, women would have an opportunity to work a second shift in industry (where jobs are paid better than in service industries where women are mostly employed in BiH), which is particularly important in smaller local communities where the supply and the selection of jobs is smaller than in larger centres. Unfortunately, all the data we currently have indicate that women are marginalised in all segments of our society, so the issue of active involvement of local communities in solving their problems is of extreme importance.
IREI: Can you give some concrete examples of successful struggles of local communities for gender equality?
DAMJANOVIĆ: So far, local communities have worked most actively on preventing domestic violence in my opinion. Centres for social work, outpatient clinics and the police (although it is not a local level institution), along with non-governmental organizations, are key institutions for providing assistance to victims of domestic violence. Reporting violence to any of the institutions in the local support chain activates a coordinated support system assembled into a multisectoral team comprising most of the local institutions I’ve already mentioned, including the police. Currently, there is strong political will and readiness of the local communities to act and understand their role in preventing domestic violence. It is the result of the dedicated work of a large number of activists from NGOs, as well as of individuals from government institutions, and I do hope that current efforts to improve the position of women in other areas of society will lead to the same or similar results.
IREI: What are the biggest obstacles for a local community facing this problem?
DAMJANOVIĆ: Although in recent years there has been a lot of talk in BiH society about achieving gender equality and significant advances have been made in this regard, I think the concept of gender equality is still misunderstood, primarily because of its multidisciplinarity and the need for comprehensive action to achieve it. First of all, it means that achieving gender equality in a society requires integrating gender principles into all spheres of local community work, and if there is no specialist knowledge of how to do that, it really becomes quite difficult. So, first and foremost, I would say that the biggest obstacle I see is the lack of understanding and knowledge on how to integrate the principles of gender equality into specific areas. Also, the existence of political will is extremely important. Work on the Ozone Project has clearly shown that those city/municipal administrations that have designated staff working on gender equality issues have achieved much better results in this field and have been more willing to systemically approach identifying and resolving some of the fundamental problems faced by women living in their local communities. Also, a major problem is that local governments do not keep gender statistics, that is, they do not sort data by gender, so they do not have an accurate view of the status and position of the population from the gender perspective. The availability of accurate and gender-disaggregated data makes it possible to create specific analyses of the position of women which should precede the creation of measures aimed at improving their position, so that in the future the emphasis should really be placed on addressing this issue.
IREI: There are many examples reflecting inequality. Probably the most painful of them are domestic violence and economic dependence. Is it possible to prioritize or does one deprivation bring about the other and everything has to be addressed simultaneously?
DAMJANOVIĆ: It is hard to say that one problem is more important than the other, and you’re right when you say that they are interconnected, that one problem leads to another, so they need to be addressed simultaneously and, as I already said, in a coordinated way. This is why it is important for each community to develop a gender action plan which would direct their action, i.e., to have a person or persons who have it in the job description to deal with gender equality issues and who would be in charge of coordinating and monitoring the implementation of these activities.
IREI: Women are not all in the same category and are not equally oppressed. In that sense, Roma women are most often cited as an example. However, we can also talk about returnee women, migrant women, etc. How can these types of marginalisation be systemically approached, considering the different kinds of oppression that can discriminate against one woman?
DAMJANOVIĆ: The approach should be the same. Unfortunately, in the current development plans of local communities, all marginalised groups are seen as one category and those communities recognize the need to pay special attention to improving their position through the creation of certain social and employment promotion measures, which is certainly commendable. However, this also poses a problem, given that each of these categories has its own different problems and needs, which have to be taken into account when creating measures to empower them. Since communities rarely publish reports on the effects of the implemented measures, i.e., they do not carry out gender analyses, and do not collect gender-disaggregated data, it is difficult to obtain data on the effects these measures have had on improving the situation of marginalised groups. Given their limited resources, I think it is in the best interest of local communities to change this approach and create as precise measures as possible to improve the situation of each of these population categories.
IREI: The systemic struggle for gender equality is usually about gender action plans. Everybody’s heard of them, but, for ordinary citizens, it is always somewhere in the realm of abstraction. Can you explain, in simple terms, what they are about and how they can be made attractive so that citizens can follow their implementation and generally get interested in the opportunities offered by that implementation?
DAMJANOVIĆ: The simplest explanation is that gender action plans are the plans to achieve gender equality in a particular local community. Taking into account the National Gender Action Plan that has defined priorities and expected results for all of BiH, local communities define the priorities, actors and expected results for their local community in the given period of time, taking into account its specificities. For example, in an agricultural area, the local government should focus on empowering female farmers or if the local community does not have a mammogram, as is the case with Gradiška, the plan defines the steps, the actors in charge and the financial means to procure this machine, and so on. It is a process led by the city/municipal administration and includes all actors at the local level from schools, health institutions, centres for social work, development agencies and NGOs who are actively involved in the creation and implementation of the measures in the plan. The interests of female citizens are mostly communicated through these actors and, as far as I know, the practice of their greater and more direct involvement in this process is non-existent. It would certainly be good for local communities to find ways to get as much feedback as possible from women themselves about their priorities and needs. Women’s NGOs can also be of help to them, if they operate in a particular local community.
IREI: What do the percentages in certain local communities say? How far have we come in achieving equality?
DAMJANOVIĆ: As I already mentioned, data on the position of women in local communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina is quite limited. Also, it’s hard to speak about one number, we’re talking more about the position of women in specific areas. For example, in the field of employment and work, the data we have from 2019 at the level of BiH, published by the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, clearly speak of the marginalisation of women in this field. According to these data, women in Bosnia and Herzegovina make up 63,9% of the working aged population, but only 32,9% of the total number of employed persons, and 26,7% of the inactive population. Only 27% of all private enterprises in BiH are owned by women, while women do most of the unpaid work related to household chores and caring for children and elderly family members.
IREI: Can you give some examples from around the world of successful efforts to address inequality and how they manage to do it?
DAMJANOVIĆ: Scandinavian countries are considered champions in achieving gender equality. What distinguishes these countries from others is their commitment to deconstructing accepted notions of the roles and positions men and women have in a society. What is considered stereotypical about women is that they are tied to the private sphere, to the role of the mother and the persons who primarily take care of the family, hence it is generally considered that women do the jobs that are less meaningful and important. Men, on the other hand, are tied to jobs that are important, they’re primarily in charge of earning money, and are therefore tied to jobs that are done outside the family, that is, the public sphere. This stereotypical and traditional division of labour and stereotypical views on the roles of women and men in society represent the main and the greatest obstacle to reducing discrimination against women, as they are directed from an early age towards jobs that are either unpaid or underpaid, i.e. to further marginalisation, discrimination and poverty. As I mentioned earlier, the Scandinavian countries have had the best results in changing these traditional or patriarchal attitudes, on the one hand by changing laws and enforcing them consistently, but above all, by working with children from a very early age on deconstructing gender stereotypes. Similar initiatives are being implemented in Bosnia and Herzegovina and are showing good results, so they should be multiplied.