A chamber of experts dedicated to the issue of equality beween men and women is being created in the Czech Republic. The body will bring together qualified people from academia and from various specialized areas of practice to focus on the issue.
The chamber should begin functioning within about a year. Its purpose is to guarantee the expertise of the advice and opinions that could be used by the Government or ministries in this area.
Eva Kavková, vice-chair of the Czech Women’s Lobby (CWL), announced the creation of the chamber today. The CWL has received a grant from Norwegian funds for the project.
"Practically anyone can pass herself or himself off as a gender expert these days. While for other professions the qualifications are clearly dictated, in the gender area there is a great deal of abuse here. The impulse to establish this chamber was the fact that while gender issue expert positions exist for EU-funded projects, the implementers of those projects have frequently avoided actually hiring experts. Instead, in order to meet the requirements, they simply appoint a woman to the job," Kavková pointed out.
People from academia and nonprofit organizations say gender equality should be reflected in various measures and plans for urban development as well as in public budgets. The creation of the chamber will be coordinated by the Sociological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University in Prague, and the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University in Brno.
The new association will include experts focused on the labor market, LGBT rights, migration, minorities, violence and sexual harassment, women’s rights and work-life balance. Kavková says the rules for membership in the chamber, its registration conditions and other requirements will now be drafted.
The preparations will take several months. The CWL currently brings together 28 academic workplaces, pro-family organizations, and women’s organizations.
The group has been awarded money from the Norwegian funds for a project called "We Defend Women’s Rights". Kavková said the group received CZK 8 million and is providing 10 % of the project costs on its own.
CWL will use the financing to establish the chamber and to advocate for legislative measures supporting birth assistants, an outreach campaign on gender equality, and women’s political participation, as well as holding the country’s second-ever Women’s Congress. The first such congress was held in the Czech Republic last June.
Last year’s congress resulted in a resolution that was communicated to politicians with demands for expanding the country’s legal options regarding flexible work hours, improving the situations of self-employed people, and increasing the capacity of nursery schools. Women from all over the country should gather in Prague on 20 June 2015 for a second time.
The main theme of next year’s congress should be the media and women’s issues. More than half of Czech society is actually female.
It remains difficult, however, for women to make their way into top management positions in business or politics there. Only one-fifth of the seats in the Czech lower house are occupied by women.
Women also earn, on average, salaries worth 20 % less than those earned by men, and subsequently receive smaller pensions after retirement. In their old age they are therefore more at risk of poverty than men are.
During their economically active years, women are more likely to have trouble finding work in the Czech Republic. This is despite the fact that more women than men are college graduates.
