International Meeting

Debates

National debate 1: Development, Labour and Gender
Place: Stip, Macedonia
Date: 23-24.04.2007
Partner: Commission for Equal Opportunities among Woman and Man in the Municipality of Stip

Context:
The labour force participation of women is lower than that of men in basically all countries in the world. The age of women affects their participation in the labour market dramatically, reflecting the link of age with their reproductive cycle and its associated constraints on women. This effect, however, has decreased over time. For men, the effect of age is more uniform across age, indicating their lower attachment to family responsibilities.
Women work shorter hours than men, and are more frequently in atypical forms of employment, different than core full-time regular employment. Unemployment rates of women are higher than men’s in most countries. Women are often found in occupations which are losing status. They are underrepresented in managerial, production and transport occupations while they make up a large part of clerical and service occupations. Women earn less income than men, even at the same level of explained educational attainment, occupation and hours of work. Most poor people are women.
Women are the most marginalized and the largest social group affected by the negative effects of privatisation and transition. The economic and social position of women in the whole region is constantly worsening, and out of public attention and public policy. The discrimination of women at the labour market and at work is speedily increasing and is socially invisible, at the same time. Women suffer more than men from unemployment, lack of resources and lack of opportunities. Women are excluded from decision-making and policy shaping. More and more, women are becoming a cheap, well-educated labour force. Marginalized groups of women, such as rural women, minority women, women refugees, elderly women, self-supporting mothers, disabled persons, young women, and Roma women are in the worst economic and social position. Public policy-makers and political parties do not recognize the gender issues and discrimination of women, steadily holding to the supposed gender equality reached during the socialist period. Thus, women’s needs and interests are not integrated into the public policy and economic sphere.
The Macedonian transitional period comes to an end and in this final phase of entering the market economy the Macedonia has became a centre of textile industry.  Macedonia has low percent of employed people (around 36-37 % of employed people) and during these 10 years of economical changes it realizes a significant change in the working status and structure of the employed people. The women’s economical position and overall living conditions is deteriorated in accordance with man, and here in Macedonia, it reflects on the fact that women are the biggest industrial engine that leads or in some way influence the economical, social and cultural changes of our country.  It is a situation when women are employed in positions of lower pay, with low monetary or non-monetary benefits and overall inferior job quality. Macedonian women face on a daily bases with exploitation of their working efforts and working time, low salaries that they receive for their hard work, low level or no health insurance, not defined working status, weak and very dangerous working conditions that they are facing with, marginalization of their position and with the moment of neglecting the issue of not having a public/ state attention and public policy that will protect their everyday existence and essence of being a women.

Objectives:
- to examine the gendered nature of the industrialization experience in Macedonia and examine how gender relations have been forged in the realm of capitalism;
- to investigate how some of the great capitalist economies of the twentieth century came to be constructed on the labour and ingenuity of young female factory workers (examination of the first factory girls in Stip, Macedonia);
- to examine how female dominated factories were crucial to developmental states' romanticizing of productivity;
- to examine women's position in the labour market in Stip, Macedonia;
- to critically examine the future prospect of local development and the economical possibilities for young women;
- to discuss case studies of the labour market and office ladies and women-managers in Stip, Macedonia;
- to critically examine the concept of economical violence and textile industry in Stip, Macedonia.

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Дебата: „Развој, труд и род“
Место: Штип
Датум: 23-ти и 24-ти април 2007

Цели на дебатата:
-да се истражи врската на индустријализацијата во Македонија и родот,
-да се истражи кaко големите капиталистички економии се создадоа врз способноста на младите жени кои работат во фабрики и доведе до појавата на фабрики во кои доминираат жени и особено млади жени;
-да се истражи позицијата на жената на пазарот на труд во Штип;
-да се дискутираат случаи на жени менаџери во Штип;
-да се истражи концептот на економско насилство и текстилната индустрија во Штип.