Gender equality

Having acceded to the international documents envisaging gender equality as the main foundation of democracy, Ukraine acknowledged that this problem is of a global and universal nature and requires undertaking and implementing specific effective actions to ensure efficiently the equality of rights and opportunities of men and women. 

In accordance with international obligations, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on 8 September 2005 has adopted a Law “On guaranteeing equal rights and opportunities of women and men,” providing the achievement of parity between men and women in all realms of human activity. But now Antycrisis Coalition didn’t support adoption of Law “On guaranteeing equal rights and opportunities of women and men during election process”, presented in Verkovna Rada of Ukraine on January, 12, 2007.

Additionally, it should be noticed that Ukraine suffers from the lack of experience in the efficient implementation of these rules. The problems as follows should be especially emphasized:

-       lack of the specific legislative initiatives (directly applicable law) stimulating the implementation of national and international law for providing the equal rights and opportunities for women and men in all the realms of social life, in legislative and executive power, in politics, in economy etc.;

-       weakness of institutional mechanisms for providing the equal rights and opportunities for women and men;

-       lack or incompleteness of relevant national programs for providing the equal rights and opportunities for women and men.

The society must see what positive changes will be waiting for it, if gender mainstreaming is practically implemented. So the practical benefit of gender policy implementation should be shown and presented to the society and individuals .  It seems necessary to switch from the arguments, provided by the ideology of the theory of democracy, to the flexible technologies of gender mainstreaming and gender partnership in the society.

The European Green Party asks the EU to support initiatives on gender issues along the following basic line:

To increase gender awareness and the capacity for gender mainstreaming in national policies and programmes among key government institutions covering human development and human security issues, through training and policy advice; to develop appropriate gender mainstreaming tools and methodologies for the policy formulation and programming process, including desegregated data, and gender analysis report.

Strengthening the Role of Civil Society and Partnership with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in promoting gender equality and as effective partners in addressing specific gender-related problems and issues

To ensure equal access for justice both for women and men in order to prevent gender based inequalities and human rights violations

To increase gender awareness of the general public and the mass media through a comprehensive media campaign strategy and integrating gender courses into educational curricula. 

To increase the impact of program activities through improved partnerships and mainstreaming into state programmes and projects