ZAGREB, 8 March, 2021 - Women account for 16% of management board members of the companies listed on the Zagreb Stock Exchange and for 22% of supervisory board members, the Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency (HANFA) said on Monday, citing data from the court register.
In a statement marking International Women's Day, HANFA said that its corporate governance code shows that Croatia and the EU are still far from gender equality on the management and supervisory boards of listed companies.
According to HANFA, there has been a considerable change in the gender structure of the supervisory boards of companies listed on the Zagreb Stock Exchange over the last decade, with the share of women increasing from 18% in 2010 to 35% in 2019. However, their share again declined in 2020 to 22% due to the delisting of some of the companies.
At the same time, the gender structure of management boards did not change considerably, ranging between 12 and 17%. Last year, 16% of management board members were women.
In recent decades, efforts have been made at EU level to increase the presence of women on companies' management and supervisory boards, mostly through adoption of different recommendations and by encouraging companies to adopt their own rules to achieve a balance in the gender structure of management and supervisory boards.
HANFA joined those efforts in October 2019 by adopting a new corporate governance code which provides that every five years the supervisory board of a company must define a target share of women on the management and supervisory boards, which must be achieved during the next five-year period. The code does not specify the percentage, but requires companies to set it by themselves in their annual report.
HANFA Governing Council chairman Ante Žigman noted that equality between men and women was one of the fundamental values of the European Union, but that despite efforts to achieve 40% female representation by 2020, the data was still unsatisfactory.
ZAGREB, 6 March, 2021 - Croatia is at the bottom of the EU ranking of women at management level and women in the EU are still far from being men's equals, according to an Eurostat report.
The COVID-19 pandemic "has led to unprecedented changes in the workplace," Eurostat said, but data on men and women at management level continue to reveal familiar patterns.
"While both women and men bring different qualities to crisis management, women remain outnumbered at the management level," Eurostat said.
"In Q3 2020, more than 9.5 million people held a managerial position in the EU: 6.2 million men and 3.3 million women. Although women represent almost half of all employed persons in the EU (46%), they are under-represented amongst managers (34%)."
In the past 20 years, the share of women in managerial postions "has gradually increased from just below 30% in Q2 2002."
Latvia and Poland on top
Latvia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovenia have the highest shares of women managers, with Latvia recording the highest share in Q3 2020 (45%), followed by Poland (44%).
Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia and Sweden are next, each with a 42% share.
Above the EU average are Ireland, Romania, Finland, Estonia, Spain, France, Portugal, Slovakia and Lithuania, their shares of women managers ranging from 38 to 35%.
In Denmark and Germany, less than one in three managers were women according to data for Q4 2019.
"At the opposite end of the scale, women account for only around a quarter of managers in Croatia (24%), the Netherlands (26%) and Cyprus (27%)," Eurostat said.
ZAGREB, 4 March 2021 - The B.a.B.e. women's NGO launched its "SURF and SOUND" project on Thursday aimed at a comprehensive fight against online violence against women and at the same time called on women to report online violence.
Women who need help can contact: (+385) 1 4663 666 or e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
"Every fifth young woman aged between 18 and 29 suffers sexual harassment online and a vast majority of them suffer sexual and physical violence by an intimate partner," B.a.B.e. warned in a press release.
The NGO underlined that women have 27 times more chance that they will be harassed online and that online violence occurs at a very young age.
A survey conducted indicates that NINE million girls in Europe suffered some form of online violence by the time they turned 15.
The "SURF and SOUND - Support, Unite, Respond, Fight to Stop Online violence" project is a comprehensive, systematic approach towards all important stakeholders in an effort to reduce the occurrence of online violence against women in society.
The project will be implemented over a period of two years in partnership with the Electronic Media Agency. The project is valued at just over HRK 1.5 million and 80% is being financed from the EU's Rights, Equality and Citizenship programme (2014-2020), the press release said.
August 1, 2020 - The Twitter campaign #zeneujavnomprostoru (women in the public space) has exploded over the last two weeks, detailing stories of sexual harassment and leading many ask, are women safe in Croatia?
Croatia is recognised as one of the safest countries in Europe. And rightly so. People leave their houses and their cars unlocked all the time. It’s an abnormality that there should be a murder or a rape here.
Speak to any female who moved here from another country and they can’t believe the difference; all speak of their initial surprise and, ultimately, their confidence in being able to walk unchaperoned around any Croatian village, town or city. Croatia is incomparably safe, particularly when judged against somewhere like the UK, where you’re lucky to get through a weekend without hearing reports of one or multiple rapes.
But, just because ex-pats feel liberated in their new lives here and you almost never hear of rape, that doesn’t tell the whole story. By and large, though women are free from physical attack and brutal rape by a stranger here in Croatia, that certainly doesn’t mean we can't ask are women safe in Croatia from sexual harassment.
2019’s annual report by the Ombudsperson for Gender Equality in Croatia stated that, in the last few years, the number of complaints they received about sexual harassment “mainly in the area of labour and employment” had risen considerably.
And, in the past two weeks, Twitter has exploded in response to a campaign started by a women’s rights activist in Rijeka, Marinella Matejčić, who created the hashtag #zeneujavnomprostoru (women in the public space). So far, the campaign has received 4865 responses – retweets, people using the hashtag or women from Croatia (and some from Bosnia and Serbia) submitting stories. Matejčić has been interviewed by all of the leading Croatian portals, Balkan Insight and even the BBC about the unexpected size to which the campaign has grown.
“We already knew that harassment was widespread in public places, the workplace and so on,” says Matejčić, who attributes much of the widespread problem to Croatia still being a patriarchal society. “But, we didn’t expect we’d be able to encourage so many women to share their stories with us. I’m so grateful to those that did.”
Are women safe in Croatia? Marinella Matejčić, the women's rights campaigner from Rijeka who created the #zeneujavnomprostoru (women in the public space) hashtag © Martina Šalov
“Most of the stories are about harassment,” she told TCN, although she also detailed some stories recounted about sexual behaviour towards minors. “That was the goal; to highlight that there is sexism and harassment happening all around us. We tolerate it because it’s part of the culture from where we came.”
It’s difficult to believe this horrible phenomenon exists when you’re a foreigner who feels so safe in Croatia. And when you’re a man. But, in preparation for writing these words, I asked every woman sat at my table. Each had at least one or several stories to tell, of being shouted at in the street, inappropriately touched. Two women from Zagreb both said that aroused men had pressed up against them on a packed tram. While they were on their way home from school!
“That’s normal here”, said one.
"So, if it’s normal here, does that mean you’re ok with it?”
“Certainly not!”
“It’s not so easy to get everyone to listen when you complain about women having nasty things said or done to them in the street or at work,” says Matejčić. “Some people just don’t see it as harassment. We’ve had quite the backlash. Some people say that women are just being hysterical about this, that they just can’t take a compliment. But, there’s a difference in being offered a compliment and the unwelcome harassment women receive in the street, on public transportation, or in the workplace.”
The dismissive opinions Matejčić details stem from a place of supreme arrogance and misunderstanding. If you want to know about racism, listen to the stories of a Romani family or a black man. If you want to understand homophobia, listen to a gay man or a lesbian. If you want to assess the genuine level of sexual harassment that exists, it is women whose stories need to be heard. Ignorant men have absolutely no place in this discussion other than to respectfully listen.
These problems certainly do not exist only in Croatia. Women are treated as second class citizens in many countries around the world, in many places the level of harassment is much worse. It is perhaps no bad thing that reports of sexual harassment have sharply risen here. Croatia is changing. And for the better. But there’s still some way to go before the catcalls, comments and inappropriate physical behaviour is as reviled as it deserves to be.
“I don’t think that it’s happening more,” says Matejčić, when asked to comment on the Croatian ombudsperson’s report. “I just think more women are finally coming forward to report it.”
ZAGREB, June 14 (Hina) - "Women rule" is the message of a left-green coalition led by the We Can! platform which presented outside parliament on Sunday the women who will head the coalition's slates in six constituencies and their programme.
Sandra Bencic said that in their communities the women heading the slates worked on improving the lives of vulnerable groups, the economy, community building and solidarity within them.
"The HDZ and the SDP each have one woman heading their slates, and we have six as well as full gender parity. We also have a programme which advocates gender equality, which is more important than gender representation on a slate," said Danijela Dolenec.
She said the coalition's MPs would fight for the right to legal, free and available abortion and against the subsequent conscientious objection, for the implementation of the convention against domestic violence, and for LGBT equality, including their right to foster and adopt children.
Rada Boric said the last Croatian parliament had less than 13% of women, whereas their representation in European parliaments ranged from 30% to 50%.
Katarina Peovic said class conflicts would intensify in the autumn and that citizens now had the chance to elect those who protected workers' rights and who would insist on higher wages and better working conditions.
She said wages in Croatia were lower and the number of work hours higher than the European average, that 90% of contracts were fixed-term and that 50% of those were signed by young people, and that 14% of the Croats who emigrated were working-age and that many were women.
Natasa Hlaban underlined the need to pay greater attention to people with disabilities, saying it was necessary to amend laws on their rights.
Srdj is a City to run in a parliamentary election with We Can!
The Srd is a City citizens' slate said in Dubrovnik it was running in the July 5 parliamentary election with the coalition led by We Can!
The head of the We Can! slate in Constituency 1, Tomislav Tomasevic, said the coalition would fight in parliament against harmful laws, regulations and projects, and for a green and resilient economy, green reindustrialisation and renewables.
International Women's Day was celebrated as it is annually on the 8th of March, and in honour of that, the Croatian media published a list of the most influential women from the scenes of business, politics and science. It's rare we can sit down and read an impressive list that Croatia can actually be proud of.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 8th of March, 2019, The popular economic weekly Lider highlighted ten influential women in Croatian business circles who were interviewed in an attempt to find out the secrets of their success.
1.) Lada Tedeschi Fiorio: Women have to fight, prove and force things because that's the way of recognising their values in the business community, said one of the richest Croatian women, shareholder and deputy chairperson of the Atlantic Group supervisory board, who is also the mother of two children and a successful marathon runner.
2.) Kristina Ercegović is known as an entrepreneur who expressed her attitude towards the Croatian Government and its tax policy "without filters", telling Minister Zdravko Maric to ''stop flogging a dead horse''.
3.) Going into law is the female job of the future, said Jadranka Sloković at the conference "Women in Business". Women now account for 43 percent of attorneys, while 60 percent of them are trainees.
4.) Medeja Lončar, chair of the management board of Siemens Croatia, has long been one of the few women in the Croatian technology sector. When you prove yourself, obstacles disappear, she pointed out, maybe some initially underestimated my different, ''female'' approach, but over time they learned that it does not mean I'm a simpler adversary.
5.) Vedrana Pribičević, a prominent economist of the younger generation, spoke in an interview for Lider about the lack of capitalism and lack of entrepreneurial culture in Croatia.
6.) The situation is worrisome for women who are underpaid, for women who do not have adequate child care solutions in their living environment, for further education, etc. It's important for women to have quality conditions, a choice of solutions and support, stated Gordana Kovačević, the president of Ericsson Nikola Tesla's management.
7.) Ariana Vela is one of the leading Croatian consultants for European Union funds, strategic planning, preparation and implementation of projects.
8.) Entrepreneurs need to go through changes, enter the digital age, and take their destiny in their hands. I want all of us to find strength, energy, money and the intelligence to be the change that our economy desperately needs, said Tajana Barančić, a leading business consultant from Astra Business Engineering.
9.) Suzana Kovačević is the founder of Lorien, who offered a unique product to the domestic market - designer female socks. Despite the fact that for years she has been struggling with a rigid system that has no time to spend listening to the problems of entrepreneurs, she said that she still isn't going to give up.
10.) Nevena Crljenko, director of Philip Morris International in New York, sent a message to women: Do not allow your ''male'' business environment to demotivate you, you're the one who decides that you will succeed. When you hear your inner voice saying that you can't do something, find a metaphorical hammer so you can knock it back.
Make sure to stay up to date by following our dedicated business and lifestyle pages.
While many continue to disregard it, gender equality in the workplace continues to be a burning issue for most. Konzum, however, seems to have it well and truly covered.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 7th of March, 2019, women account for over 74 percent of Konzum's employees, while in the retail section they account for almost 84 percent, with 84 percent of women in the chain's retail section also holding leadership positions.
From cashiers and workers in the warehouse through to employees in lower and middle management, all the way up to managers in some of the giant company's highest positions, women make up 74 percent of Konzum's employees.
Thus, more than 76 percent of all leadership positions within this huge company belong to women, and women also account for nearly 84 percent of retail workers. It is also interesting to note that women in Konzum have entered into some of the departments that were until fairly recently publicly perceived as "typically male", such as the logistics-distribution centre or the business support section.
"We are exceptionally proud to point out that the vast majority of employees in Konzum are women. Their great effort, teamwork, creativity, intuition, and their level of responsibility they put into their tasks daily enrich and enhance Konzum's business. That's why we want to thank them with a number of benefits through which we're striving to make the balancing between work and home life less difficult,'' said Slavko Ledić, CEO of Konzum, congratulating the International Women's Day for Konzum employees.
All parents of first grade kids who work for Konzum have the right to have a day off on their child's first day of the school, and there are as many as 222 other employee benefits available this school year. In December, an amount of money intended for children is paid to all parents, along with other benefits for all employees, such as benefits for newborn babies, christmas bonuses and more, the possibility of working part-time is also readily available.
Konzum has emphasised the fact that it as a company cherishes the policy of equal opportunities for women and men so that everyone gets an equal shot at opportunities for further professional advancement, additional education and training, as well as equality between women and men in high positions, and in terms of wages, so that women and men are equally paid for working in the same positions.
Make sure to stay up to date by following our dedicated business page for much more.
Three Croatian women complete Spatathlon, 246 km race, one of the biggest ultra running races in the World! Veronika Jurišić takes fifth place!
Feminist collective fAKTIV organised on Wednesday the Night March March 8, a protest march held for the second year in a row, with this year’s theme the struggle for endangered sexual and reproductive rights of women, especially the right to an abortion
Although the traditional dalmatian klapa singing was mostly reserved to men in the past, women had their own way of expressing music and preserved their traditions up to this day. This unique festival is dedicated to Female traditional singing and music and will take place tonight (August 6, 2015) from 20:00 in Vrbolje near Trilj.
The "Vesta Festa" Festival will entertain its visitors with:
- Traditional female songs from the Cetina region
- 30. anniversary of ethno-music of Lidija Bauk
- Stories and legends of the Cetina region
- Exhibition: Vrpolje in old photograps
- Fair of traditional hand-made products and gastronomy
A rather interesting evening it will be. Get to know the local culture among those special ladies from the Cetina region.