Importance of women's political empowerement - Gurmai Zita

Besima Boric
Importance of women's political empowerment
Experiences form Bosnia and
Herzegovina
Importance of women's political empowerment in
the light of new economic and social challenges
I come from Bosnia and Herzegovina, which in the last 20 years has been put through dramatic
events and it is still striving for its existence, struggling for the redefinition of its Constitution and
as well as the fulfilment of requirements defined in the accession process to the EU.
In my Party, SDP BiH, we succeeded to introduce a formal framework and required statutory
protective and positive measures so as to ensure increased presence of women in party
bodies, electoral lists and all decision-making positions. In practice the outcomes of this
approach are assessed to be only partly successful. However, it is appalling to see that out of
12 ministers in the new government of the Federation of BiH there is only one female minister,
who is from my own party! This is a worrying indicator that gender equality is still regarded as
an unimportant issue, sidelined to a parallel railway track, while the presence of women in the
executive government is only symbolic.
Still, I would like to share with you the experience how we succeeded to turn the focus of the
politics of the Social Democratic Party in BiH and to reorient it towards economic and social
issues mainstreaming gender in all what we are doing.
For a long time we have been criticized for not dealing with the problems of workers, being
accused, rightly, that we have neglected the issues concerning their rights and interests.
Understanding the rightly addressed criticism, two women, party activists, initiated and got the
consent of the party leadership, to establish a Forum of trade union activists. Nobody interfered,
as nobody believed that something important could come out of it. Our focus was on speaking
up for workers and articulating burning labour issues. Also, we were dedicated to establishing a
party-trade union dialogue, and identifying good common solutions for different problems that
workers faced. Conducting various advocacy activities and with the support of our MPs, we
make an impact by amending the laws and put pressure for their effective implementation.
After four years of burdensome work, along with a number of important formal decisions taken
by our party bodies we have succeeded to put this new priority on the agenda our party,
namely, to speak up for male and female workers, both employed and unemployed, with or
15