ZAGREB, February 7, 2018 - Despite a growing institutional and public-policy framework in the field of gender equality in European countries, there is still insufficient progress in real gender practice and women continue to be in an unfavourable position on the labour market and in the private sphere and Croatia is not an exception to this trend, it was said at a conference on professional equality between men and women on Wednesday.
"In Croatia, women account for 54% of the unemployed on the labour market. More women have fixed-term employment contracts and they earn 12% less than men. They are victims of sexual harassment in the workplace. They are twice as burdened and are asked discriminatory questions during job interviews and often reach the glass ceiling, i.e. are not promoted. Only 2.5% of men use parental leave," the ombudswoman for gender equality, Višnja Ljubičić, said.
The conference, entitled "Harmonising professional and family life - how to improve professional equality between men and women in current European societies?", was organised by the French Embassy in Croatia and the Centre for Education, Counselling and Research (CESI) non-governmental organisation within the framework of the European Juggling Motherhood and Profession (JUMP) project.
Ljubičić presented the results of two surveys conducted as part of the "In pursuit of full equality between men & women: Reconciliation of professional and family life" project which indicate that along with southern European countries, Croatia has one of the biggest gender gaps with regard to household chores and is also among those countries with the biggest gender gap in the EU with regard to everyday care of children. As many as 83% of women in Croatia conduct routine household chores and 58% of them care for their children.
A survey on influences of gender-based division of child rearing responsibilities and household chore allocation on women's employment, covering 600 working women, showed that this unequal gender-based division of family obligations and household chores results in negative consequences for many women, in terms of their professional and private lives alike, Ljubičić underscored.
About one quarter of employed women have experienced conflicts with their superiors or employers because of their family obligations and about 21% of women have experienced conflicts with their colleagues. One in five women has at least once in her career refused a promotion due to family obligations and about 13% have received a lower salary at least once because they could not perform all job-related duties due to family obligations.
Ljubičić said the biggest obstacle that women experience on the labour market today was motherhood. About 55% were not re-hired when their contracts expired or were fired when they returned to work or their salaries were reduced. "These results indicate that we need to change our policies," Ljubičić underscored.
She recommended that a strategy should be created that will have fathers equally contributing to parenthood, that parental leave allowance should be increased and that a positive climate should continually be created toward maternity and paternity leave.
