“I understand the vigor, hard work, devotion and courage contributed by every woman in your activities and to ensure higher representation of Georgian citizens in the local authorities. I would like to see the representation higher every next year, which means that representation of women in the local authorities and the Parliament of Georgia to be higher and fairer and to encounter less impediments on our path which implies participation in the political process and civic engagement in the decision-making process”, - the First Vice-Speaker, Chair of the Gender Equality Council, Tamar Chugoshvili stated at the 6th Annual Conference “Georgian Women Councilors’ Forum”.

She introduced the details about two directions of GEC activity: political participation and economic empowerment of women. “These are two directions set as the priority for us, especially economic empowerment which has been selected as the key issue for 2019. These issues remain relevant for the Gender Equality Council as all in all, one of the key matters for us – women – is capacity of independence existence, which further defines many other aspects, including active participation in politics”.

Speaking about facilitation to political participation, she mentioned that now, the Constitution clearly outlines the commitment of the state to ensure essential equality between men and women.

“It means that we shall not be limited with the declarative norms and phrases solely but to make the certain steps to ensure this equality”.

According to her, the political consensus regarding the bill concerning the gender-balanced electoral lists has failed in 2017, though we are in a different reality today as we are to move to the proportional electoral system for the Elections in October 2020.

“We have already communicated with the political parties to adopt the encouraging norms and provide in the law that our party with 30% - every third person in the list to be of a different gender will enjoy 30% of budget funding which constitutes quite a high amount and is of utmost importance for the political parties. Thus, I believe that the Parliament elected in 2020 will be of higher representative for women and we shall stand united today to facilitate to this process. As to the municipal elections, I hope that the City Assemblies are able to receive 30% quotas. Inasmuch as the municipal elections remain of the mixed system, we may dwell on to facilitate increased number of women in the City Assemblies”, - she stated.

Speaking about economic empowerment of women, the GEC Chair stated that accessibility of women to the state-funded economic programs has been under scrutiny this year.

“The Parliament is very eager to not only ensure accessibility of women to the state-funded programs but to have them open and directed to facilitate and assist higher engagement of women in these programs”.

She stressed importance of professional requalification: “Professional requalification study reveals that if the programs are respectively operating, then employment rate is high – 60% and over and many women after requalification find the better job”.

In her speech, Mme. Chugoshvili stated that soon the change is to be introduced to the Labor Code improving the environment in the private sector for women.

She touched upon the legal changes on sexual harassment initiated by the GEC. The discussion panel of the Conference “Economic Empowerment of Women and Youth at the local level” was also attended by the GEC member, Nino Tsilosani speaking about the GEC thematic inquiry “Accessibility of Women to the State Economic Projects”, main findings and recommendations.