A meeting for cooperation with the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy

On March 7th our team member Margarita Spasova met senior expert Teodor Tzanev and state expert Ani Evgenieva from the Equal Opportunities, Antidiscrimination and Social Support Department of the Bulgarian Ministry of Labour and Social Politics.

The department develops and coordinates the execution of the state policy in the field of equal opportunities and participates in the development of methodologies for monitoring and research of gender equality and gender differences. The department is also a secretariat of the National Council of Gender Equality. Ekaterina Karavelova Foundation is a member of the Council since October 2021.

The purpose of the meeting was to introduce the work of our organization and to discuss the possibilities for cooperation in the context of our participation in the National Council of Gender Equality. Margarita Spasova paid special attention to the work we do on equality policy and more specifically on the problem with the insufficient representation of women in elective positions. She shared our Women’s Participation in Politics Report done in November 2021 and stressed our engagement with that problem.

The representatives of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy were interested in the other scopes of our work. The participants discussed the ways in which SHE in Bulgaria network can be a channel for popularizing various initiatives. One of them is the opportunity for local institutions and organizations to apply for a Distinguishing mark for achievements in effective execution of the gender equality politcy.

The project “Study of the needs and problems of women in Bulgaria” is implemented with financial support from the Active Citizens Fund of Bulgaria, financial support is provided by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway under the EEA Financial Mechanism (https://www.activecitizensfund.bg). The main goal of the project “Study of the needs and problems of women in Bulgaria” is to conduct a qualitative sociological research to shed light on the problems and needs of women from different social groups from all 6 planning regions in the country.