Local meeting “Gender in Youth Work-Perspectives, Challenges and Opportunities” Follow Up

Topic: Macedonian case on gender challenges and equality progress was the main aspect on the local meeting, adding to it Macedonian policies comparing to European policies and their implementation and their effect on Macedonia and citizens. How Macedonia has developed in the last years, what is needed to be done, what is the best solution to for these problems, how can we contribute and what exactly can we do.

Location: Faculty of Philology “Blazhe Koneski” Skopje, Macedonia

Participant profiles: young people/students.

Methodology: The first part of the meeting started with presentation of the national laws on gender equality and European ones and giving facts, numbers and realities from the same. The presentation included information of the European policies concerning the gender equality progress report and how Macedonia is handling these policies and implementing them. The project G-PCO was also presented with its activities and aim.

The next part of the meeting was dedicated to initiate debate and discussion when participants could choose from some of photos offered to them and present how they see equality or inequality on the picture and what needs to be done in Macedonia in order to make country where women and man are equal.

Questions and comments from the participants were enabled leading to very fruitful discussion. The discussion also tackled the role of young people in the process and emphasized their importance into helping reach equality. Burning discussion was brought concerning the national law on defining what is marriage (law saying that a family is only formed by one man and one women) and who can get married and adopt children.

Evaluation: The evaluation was made among the group, giving the participants opportunity to share their opinion about the meeting itself and about the project. They were satisfied that this kind of topic was selected for the general public, since they felt there is lack of information

about the situation of the gender equality in Macedonia and Europe in general. The evaluation was made through a circle of satisfaction, where each participant could share their satisfaction from the meeting, their satisfaction from the presentation, the moderator and the fulfillment of their learning/information expectations.

Conclusions and recommendations: The main conclusions and recommendations the participants made during the workshop were:

Media should report more about empowerment of women and encourage citizens to support female participation on all levels in the country;

NGO’s should be more visible in their work on the topic, include more visibility among young people especially young girls;

Government should be more supportive in involvement of women on all levels and not to include women on their political party lists just because of the law. They should make things come naturally and promote women as leaders too;

Young girls especially should attend more activities for self development and encouragement for taking more active role in the society

Trainings for boys should be made where they will have to put themselves in the shoes of the girls and understand why they need to support their mothers, sisters, girlfriends, women, etc.