Promoting Equal Opportunities for Women and Men in the Czech Republic: Real Effort or Window Dressing Supported by the European Union?
- The Czech Republic has almost 12 years of experience with promoting equal opportunities
between women and men, five years as a member of the European Union. It
can therefore serve as a good example of ups and downs of the process in the new
member states. In my speech, I shall briefly recapitulate the history of equalopportunities
efforts in the Czech Republic against the backdrop of the usual indicators
(e.g. women’s employment, unemployment, gender pay gap, political participation
etc.). I shall also discuss the EU’s performance and (dis-)interest in the situation
in the new member states. As the title suggests, I shall argue that government’s
efforts to promote equal opportunities for women and men are half-hearted and have
minimal impact on the women’s condition. The EU does little to nothing to help bring
a real change.
The concept of equal opportunitiesP
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P for women and men had no relevance for the
Czech government before 1998 since gender equality was supposedly one of the cornerstones
of socialism. Things did not change also during the first years after the fall
of the Iron Curtain. While various „women”P
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P non-governmental organizations tried to
put gender inequalities on public agenda since the early 90s, politicians and state
bureaucrats paid no attention to their efforts. This was despite the fact that the
Czech Republic signed the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women as already as in March 1982.
The change came in the end of 1998. However, the reason was not a genuine interest
in equality, rather it was directly related to a prospect of joining the European
Union (EU). Since then, we can trace a history of government’s equal opportunity
efforts which I shall briefly sketch in this paper. Concretely, I shall first provide basic
information about gender inequalities in the Czech Republic. Than, I shall outline the
main twists and turns of efforts of the successive Czech governments to build an
adequate institutional mechanism to support promotion of equal opportunities. Finally,
I shall also look at the impact of the EU along the way.
Footnotes:
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