Ukraine’s Parliament Seeks to Ensure Equal Rights for Women
 |
MP Olena Bondarenko, MP Leonid Hrach (center) and MP Mykola Tomenko, at the Verkhovna Rada Committee's on Human Rights, National Minorities, and Inter-ethnic Relations, hearing September 21, 2006.
Photo Credit: PDP |
On September 8, 2005, Ukraine’s Parliament (The Verkhovna Rada) adopted “The Law on Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men.” Just over a year later, in November 2006, the Secretary General of the Verkhovna Rada Secretariat established a designated officer in each parliamentary committee to serve as equal rights and opportunities representative. These were two big steps for the Ukrainian legislature in adopting a new gender approach and embracing new concepts.
When Olena Suslova accepted the position of Gender Activities Coordinator in USAID’s Parliamentary Development Program (PDP) in 2003, she did not expect immediate results. In fact, given her knowledge of the Ukrainian Parliament, she was almost convinced that most of her efforts in advancing gender concepts would be futile in this still, in many ways, post-Soviet institution. Olena had worked in the NGO sector since 1989, and felt she knew all the opportunities and drawbacks of civil society institutions.
With state institutions, introduction of new concepts and changing the way they work seemed more challenging and difficult. However, this very challenge was one of the reasons Olena had joined PDP. First, she started to work with committee staff and was pleased to discover highly dedicated professionals willing to embrace new ideas. Olena found out that despite a seminar on gender issues in which many of them had participated, they did not fully understand new concepts and did not agree with them. When someone would confront her dismissively with the challenge, “I don’t agree with ‘this gender thing’ of yours,” she would usually reply back in a joking tone: “Tell me what exactly it is about my gender that you don’t agree with, and maybe I will find that I don’t agree with it either!” Her response often led to a conversation in which Olena could discuss the basic concepts and purpose of gender analysis in depth. The approach was effective.
The committee staff representatives soon turned into a team of highly qualified specialists on gender issues. The principal task that united them was the production of the Manual on Legislative Support of Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men. Committee and parliament division staff, civil society organizations, international organizations and the Ukrainian expert community contributed to the manual, which was received with great success and reprinted several times. “This publication, without a doubt, was a turning point in understanding gender issues by Parliament Members and staff, “noted Olena Bondarenko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities, and Inter-ethnic Relations. “With its help they became well-versed in gender terminology and adopted gender-balanced approaches to lawmaking in their everyday work.”
After the publication of the manual, the next step in this process was to have a staff person assigned in each committee who would consult and provide support on gender-related and equal opportunities issues in the area of the committee’s jurisdiction. MP Bondarenko brought this idea before Chairman of the Parliament Oleksandr Moroz who, in the wake of November 2006 parliamentary hearings “On Equal Rights and Opportunities in Ukraine: Realities and Prospects,” approved implementation at the level of the secretariat. In fact, the Ukrainian parliament implemented provisions of the 2005 Law on Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men before any national and regional executive agencies.
Since then, the group of officers (now called Gender Focal Points) is still active and has been expanded to include members in each ministry. USAID’s PDP-II continues to seek ways to help support these specialists in applying gender analysis and developing gender policy in a professional, effective manner. One new recommendation for 2009 was the introduction of a Gender Advisor to the parliament’s leadership, and the project is working on a strategy to ensure the effectiveness of that effort.
Back to Top ^ |
