Daniela Gašparíková, UNDP Resident Representative to Montenegro

Dear minister Srzentic,

Dear Mr Spitz,

Respected panellists,

Your exellences, distinguished guests and participants

It is my pleasure to welcome you to this event we organized with the aim to take stock of and exchange views on gender equality in public administration.

26 years ago, women from all over the world gathered at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Being a turning point for the gender equality, ‘The Beijing Conference’ has codified the women’s full participation based on equality in all spheres of society, as a non-negotiable fundamental for the achievement of equality, development, and peace.

Some of us would say that a quarter of the century would be enough to achieve all set goals.

The reality is somewhat different – not only are the gaps not being closed at the pace expected, in many places women are experiencing societal backlash triggered by the very progress in exercising their rights.

Women on global level as well as in in Montenegro, are still not sufficiently represented in decision-making positions and in management structures. An average woman during her lifetime will spend at least 8 years in unpaid work, and if we continue at this pace, it will take 257 years to close the economic gap. This tells us that the road to achieving gender equality is long and challenging, that it requires a comprehensive approach, responsibility, and joint action by all: institutions and individuals.

UNDP has been working for years to contribute to the empowerment of women in all spheres of life and a better design and implementation of gender equality policies.

The research on perceptions and attitudes of citizens and employees in public administration on gender equality is one of such contributions.  It has been conducted in partnership with national institutions - in particular Human Resource Management Agency and General Secretariat of the Parliament of Montenegro. It is our contribution to establishing a baseline that would inform further pathways of public administration reform, and integration of gender equality as the guiding principle in reform process.

We trust these findings will trigger discussions around where opportunities lie to accelerate the progress in making gender equality a reality in Montenegrin public administration. In turn, this will respectively contribute to the citizens’ wellbeing, economic development and growth, as well as country’s capacities for the EU accession process.

The name of today's conference is not accidental. Open and efficient public administration is essential for democratic governance and one of the pillars of any democratic society.  Only when we have a parity between men and women in decision-making positions, equal access to resources, gender-sensitive policies tailored to both men and women needs, can we be sure that we live in a society of equal opportunities. In that regard, degree of gender equality is a very good and universal measure of a societal and democratization progress as well as sustainable development.

I need to express our gratitude to everyone who contributed to the realization of this project, especially to the participants of the program, now the 24 trainers for gender equality in public administration. They are bearers of knowledge, agents of change within public administration, with valuable role in the process of creation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies in the future.

Today we have joint forces here with Ministry of Public Administration, EU, CoE, OSCE, Swedish Gender Equality Agency and NGOs to talk about gender mainstreaming in public administration, but today Montenegro has more allies in progressing towards gender equality – UK, ILO, EBRD and Secretariat to the Competitiveness Council of the Montenegro who got together to talk about “Gender Equality and  Women Economic Empowerment in Montenegro“. These two events are demonstrating simultaneous and powerful alliance and commitment not to allow that backlash on gender equality and women’s rights takes another century before we see progress in Montenegro.

With that in mind, on behalf of UNDP I would like to invite all development partners to undertake our common task to devotedly work on creating societies in which gender equality will fully be achieved.

Thank you!