Do We Know How to Live with the Law on Gender Equality?

09 December 2006

How many of you have heard of the Law on Gender Equality? Do you know what does it mean for men and women to have equal rights in B&H society? It is hard to imagine any serious work on gender equality done without support in a state's legislation, and B&H has just such a Law for three years now.

In our societies, involved in prolonged transition, we often ask ourselves what would it be better to adopt the legislation first and then create support programmes and introduce them to the public through seminars and public awareness campaigns on the laws and the issues they regulate? Or is it better to take the �bottom up� approach, use the initiatives and needs of citizens in a society in a given moment and demand that legislation is created and adopted?

Quite often, the fact is brought up that the spontaneous evolutionary processes in the society take long time to increase awareness and implement certain priorities and changes, therefore, we use various �catalysts� to speed up the process of social changes. B&H faces a serious lag behind in terms of implementation of some legislation, but also in terms of creation of strong initiative for social changes. The civil society is the country is underdeveloped and the citizens have been rather shy to engage and involve themselves. The work of gender bodies in municipal and city governments, as well as the educational gender programmes of the women NGOs have to be followed through and coordinated in order to be able to reach European standards and enable B&H to enter the company of European states, a country of mature civil society, with clear personal identity and understanding of universal values that would enable it to incorporate itself into the idea of EU.

That was the principle that NGO Forma F from Mostar incorporated in its work. This year, Forma F implements two important projects, Partnership for Equal Opportunities and Through Education to Elimination of Discrimination and Violence against Women, demonstrating that they are on the right path of transition process that B&H society has to go through. This is a small contribution to the �safe future of women� in B&H, but demonstrates how the serious work in partnership with the institutions, but also working with citizens can lead to the all important cohesion and understanding between citizens and governing institutions.

The methodology characteristic of Forma F can be most easily described through this year�s implementation of activities in the field. The project Through Education to Elimination of Discrimination and Violence against Women is implemented in all parts of the country, with emphasis on �marginalized� municipalities: Berkovici, Jezero-Jajce, Fojnica, Vogosca, Siroki Brijeg and Prozor/Rama. The training sessions ask the participants very clear questions: What is gender and how they recognize it and what do they think of gender equality?

Making the women aware of this issue brings up the question of women�s mission, but also brings to the fore the need for stronger engagement of women through local community initiatives. We have to mention that the trainers involved in the project, i.e. the women working with participants in the field, were themselves only recently trained in similar Forma F trainings (trade union and local activists, politicians, sociologists, lawyers, local civil servants, etc).

The selection of trainers illustrates the serious intention of Forma F to deal with problems at all levels of social engagement, to uncover hidden forms of discrimination and violence, to tie together the divided social tissue and restore cohesion and solidarity among women.

The results are very visible. The legislation, above all the Law on Gender Equality has been well explained and can be implemented without significant obstacles. The text is not just highly sophisticated legal talk, which is how we see majority of legislative bills, but a content ready to be implemented and used in everyday life.

The participants learned to recognize local problems and how to involve the local self-government into the identified problems; how to create allies among political figures to replace the frequent social and political antagonism. Importantly, all participants emphasized the need for formal establishment of NGOs in their local communities, in order to continue working on issues identified in the training sessions or, if possible, to revitalize the existing women organizations that have received renewed energy and platform for future work and engagement.

The necessary social cohesion we mentioned has been strengthened in the training sessions. One example of that is the wish to establish municipal union organizations, in addition to NGOs, in place where they don�t exist. The B&H trade unions have promoted and included, as of late, the gender component in their programmes and activities. The women members of trade unions involved in Forma F project used the trainings for direct discussions of their activities. The representatives of the local administration were also included in the implementation of trainings either as local coordinators or through assistance in terms of logistics and technical services.

Such approach to creation and work on gender trainings requires years of experience and work on gender related issues in all levels of political and social work. Forma F team, in the ten years of its work, demonstrated willingness and persistence to make gender equality its priority, hoping to use this world a bit more safer place through gender ideas and new values, and help women reach equal representation and full equality in B&H society, still dominated by traditionalism and patriarchate.

The implementation of similar projects and ideas requires the mechanisms and bodies in local administration charged with supervision of implementation of the Law on Gender Equality. Therefore, Forma F started another project in cooperation with B&H Federation Gender Centre.

Partnership for Equal Opportunities project is implemented in Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, in municipalities of Neum and Stolac and the City of Mostar. None of the municipalities nor the City of Mostar have taken action on provisions of article 21 of the Law, which obligates all governmental bodies to adopt a programme of measures to achieve gender equality in all areas and at all levels.

Forma F made it its priority to achieve that goal this year, in order to secure institutional instruments for implementation of the Law and to �build a house for implementation of the idea of equality� on local level, through its activities and training programmes. Lengthy negotiations with local authorities, still ongoing, as well as the expertise provided by the Gender Centre FB&H have bore results.

The Chairman of Mostar City Council expressed his wish to establish a City Commission on Gender Equality as soon as possible. The political problems and �priorities� in Mostar do slow down the processes of reorganization of City administration, therefore, the establishment of appointment of Gender Equality Commission.

The municipal administration in Stolac also accepted the offer for cooperation and has already prepared a draft Municipal Statute and Rules of Procedures of the Municipal Council to integrate all changes and amendments proposed by FB&H Gender Centre, thus harmonizing all of its normative acts with the Law on Gender Equality.

The southernmost B&H municipality of Neum, on the coast, went the furthest in establishment of gender instruments. At the end of October, the Municipal Council named its Gender Equality Commission, chaired by Iva Culjak.

The instruments for implementation of the Law on Gender Equality, although with great delay, are being established, not by spontaneous, evolutionary action by through catalysts, social initiatives proposed by NGOs and well organized citizens that use the existing legislation to defend their human and women rights.

All activities are implemented with the financial support by Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and UNDP�s Gender Team.