More and more women are exercising their right to an education and are domineering in certain fields such as law, economy, education and medicine, but when it comes to their presence in managerial positions, there is an imbalance. Men are dominant in this field, whereas as per tradition, women are leaders in household activities.
Official data from the State Statistical Office (SSO) for September 2020 shows that 59% of people with degrees in North Macedonia from 2000-2019 are women. In 2019, out of the overall number of defended master degrees, 60.1% belong to women, and 58.9% have defended PhD dissertations.
Although they have the adequate education, numbers show that women get lower wages for the same education level. The statistical data from 2014 says that men who have degrees make MKD 24,834 on average whereas women make 23,488. Men who only have high school diplomas make MKD 21,024 and women on the same education level make 17,455. Women also work fewer hours than men.
“Despite the high number of female employees with higher education degrees, there is a visible imbalance in terms of the percentage of women present in managerial positions in business and society as a whole, only 28.7% according to the latest research from the first quarter in 2020. It’s established that the higher you go in management bodies, like supervision and managerial boards, boards of directors etc., the fewer women there are,” says Lidija Tripunoska, general manager of the Marili agency, an agency that works on projects dedicated to businesswomen, as well as making a yearly selection of top 10 women managers in the country for the past 25 years.
She says that there are objective and subjective factors for this condition. Part of them are in the traditional norms that constitutes the role of women in the household and society, and another part are in the insufficient nurturing of the culture of success if women in business.
“We’re taking activities to increase the percent of women in managerial teams following European norms. I believe that Marili’s promotional projects for women in business have been leaving a mark for a quarter or a century, building a path for support and motivation for young generations of educated women to be brave, dive into business waters and build successful careers in entrepreneurship, management, and female leadership,” Tripunoska says.
From her experience, the processes for women’s rights and equality are moving forward slowly, but surely. Women have equal access to any job, as well as qualifications. Sometimes, they’re even more qualified than men.
The SSO’s most recent data shows that 39.9% or 376,111 of people who are able to work in this country are women. Out of 789,552 employed people, 40.3% or 317,813 are women.
Women are most represented in legal, economic, pedagogic and medical activities, as well as marketing, HR management and IT in more recent times. They also dominate labor-intensive industries and the processing industry.
Housework still falls on women as per tradition. In household activities, meal prep takes 37% of women’s time, as opposed to only 12% in men. Dishwashing takes up 16% of household activities for women as opposed to 2% for men.
The Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation says that women are still not equally represented in decision making processes despite the existing quotas.
“One crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, was enough to show us that women’s needs are easily forgotten and neglected, taken as neutral and lacking in the state’s responses, such as in creating certain measures for dealing with the pandemic.
While institutions needed time to adjust, female organizations were the ones that continued to relentlessly work on the field, providing support and help to female victims of gender based violence, as well as other marginalized groups of women, realizing what they really need and lobbying for institutions to take concrete activities, making sure that the laws that are being adopted work in practice,” the Foundation says.
Through the work of their partner organizations, they deem that there is still discriminatory content in different spheres of the public and political life, including education. There are also discriminatory narratives by key political figures, the media and the general public, which strengthen previously established gender stereotypes and prejudices.
They point out that the progress in terms of legislation related to gender based violence and discrimination is obvious, and there are processes related to the general systemic frame for gender equality. They believe that it’s crucial for these legal changes to find adequate and consistent application in practice, because otherwise all the efforts are futile despite the “perfect” framework that exists on paper.
It’s crucial in all these processes, they add, for institutions to take into account the needs, priorities and problems women across the country are facing, which are being articulated, addressed, and transmitted through female civil organizations.
Minister of Labor and Social Policy Jagoda Shahpaska told a public debate that her ministry is working seriously on preparing a new Gender Equality Strategy this year. Shahpaska also said that gender equality is a joint commitment and a priority of the government, as well as part of the 2020-2024 work program and a commitment stemming from the agenda for sustainable development until 2030 on a national and local level.
Shahpaska concluded that it’s important to respect the concept of equal opportunities when it comes to achieving gender equality, meaning that men and women should have equal rights to human, social, economic and cultural development, as well as an equal right to a voice in social and political life.
Suzi Koteva Stoimenova
Translated by Dragana Knezhevikj
