Consultative meeting “Improving measures to support the employment of women in the countryside, as well as measures of social protection”
On April 27th, 2017, a consultative meeting on the topic “Improving measures to support the employment of women in the countryside, as well as measures of social protection” was held in Vrsac. The meeting was attended by representatives of local institutions, CSOs, as well as people from local communities who are interested in the above topic.
The meeting was organized within the framework of the project "ALTER - Active Local Territories for Economic Development of Rural Areas" funded by the European Union, as part of the activities "Improving CSO cooperation with public institutions in sustainable rural development". The project is implemented at the national level by the Network for rural development of Serbia.
The main problems discussed at the meeting were:
• The difficult position of a woman in the countryside - big work on running an agricultural household with almost no right to adequate compensation, health care, etc.,
• Women are a small percentage of register agricultural household,
• Insufficient ownership of women by property,
• There are no Women's Associations in rural areas,
• Lack of public meeting places for women in rural areas.
The participants of the meeting defined concrete proposals for solving identified problems:
• Education women's in rural areas (women's rights, opportunities, social entrepreneurship, opportunities for activation and self-organization, opportunities for starting a business, "what are their needs and proposals" ...),
• System support for rural events organized by women's associations,
• Increased powers of the ‘’MZ – local community unit’’ - a proposal to provide the MZ with certain / appropriate funds and competencies for carrying out activities in their communities,
• Amendments to the public procurement law which, when scoring to a certain extent / percentage, recognizes and respects traditional producers, social entrepreneurship, women as producers...
• The Small Producers Law as a system of protection for small producers with clearly defined rules of production and marketing, direct sales and association models to help small producers (who are often women) survive in the market.
