Women less paid than men for same job position: roundtable

Women are paid about 18 percent less than men for the same job position and qualifications, and are represented by 25 percent less compared to men at the labor market. Furthermore, women spend about 2,5 hours more than men at the job doing unpaid work.

These are some of the results presented by participants at Friday’s roundtable “Strategy for gender-responsive budgeting – five years later“, saying the results are insufficient and further work is needed, not only on adoption of laws and strategies, but also implementation through gender-responsive budgeting.

Minister of Labor and Social Policy Mila Carovska stressed the Government’s commitment is real, not only declarative, in improving the state of affairs in the field of gender equality through the key indicator of gender-responsive budgeting.

“In my capacity, I will invest efforts into doing things the right way, something that would be impossible without the support from the Finance Ministry, which shares our commitment”, said Carovska.

She stressed they would work on the establishment of mechanisms for gender-responsive budgeting, so that budgets of all institutions are transparent and show how one or the other group of citizens is affected.

Dominika Stojanoska, Head of UN Women Office in Macedonia, said special indicators are required in order to see the progress made in enhancement of gender equality.

“Progress will not be measured by amended laws and mechanisms, but according to budget allocations”, she added.

Finance Ministry representative Branimir Jovanovikj said the problem was that budget beneficiaries do not possess the capacities to draft gender-sensitive policies, but also that the budgetary process is not tailored or open for gender budgeting.

“We are aware of this and are working on a new law on budgets, towards making this process more open and adaptable to the incorporation of gender aspects”, said Jovanovikj.