The Gender Equality Committee held its twenty-first sitting on 17 February. The sitting was chaired by the Committee’s vice-chairperson, Zivodarka Dacin.

The sitting saw a presentation of the Lifelong Learning regional parliamentary project. Sonja Lokar, member of the Gender Equality Working Group of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, presented the project to the deputies. Ms Lokar listed the key problems of transition countries’ populations, mainly related to high unemployment and lack of skills in dealing with new technologies. In her words, nations must create development plans to overcome such issues; also needed were changes to education systems. Ms Lokar also stressed that not enough women were active in politics, which leads to countries not dealing with such real-life issues, focusing instead of matters considered more important.

The Committee especially discussed the degradation of the female workforce, which occurred simultaneously with the degradation of fields where women are most prominent. More women are unemployed, less is invested in their education, and employers prefer men. Solutions adopted by EU countries were also discussed, as was the necessity of reaching consensus on such issues in order to resolve unemployment problems through continuing education.

Zivodarka Dacin and Nadica Momirov are to represent the Gender Equality Committee at a regional parliamentary meeting to be held in Sarajevo on 24 and 25 February to discuss these matters.