Andrei Brighidin, Director for Development at the East Europe Foundation, believes that broad information is needed to make Moldovan society understand that gender inequality is not a women's problem, but a problem of society as a whole. According to Brighidin, "a society that is not gender-sensitive" is not sustainable and democratic. Speaking to IPN news agency IPN, the development director said that there is progress in public policy documents, but we need to see a proper implementation.
The 2024 Gender Equality Index warns of setbacks on the dimension of perceptions and stereotypes, with a drop of several percentage points compared to previous years. Andrei Brighidin communicated that in the period 2021-2022, the Republic of Moldova faced several crises, such as the refugee crisis, the energy crisis, drought and so on. and the management of these situations was placed on the shoulders of women holding leading positions in the state, which led to a worsening of perceptions and stereotypes.
In her opinion, another important factor that cannot be overlooked is the hate speech and discrimination that often comes from politicians during election campaigns. In this respect, says Brighidin, strong measures are needed to prevent and combat discrimination against women. Although there have been some improvements in other areas, such as reducing discrimination in the workplace, they are still modest, stressed the director for development at the East Europe Foundation.
Andrei Brighidin noted that without structural measures, we cannot combat stereotypes and prejudices, in particular referring to the paradigm shift in legislation, the development and implementation of measures to encourage women to take up so-called "non-traditional" professions, such as in the IT sector, measures that would encourage fathers. According to Brighidin, these are public policy documents, but at the same time there are still many barriers that we need to be aware of.
Asked to what extent paternal leave is taken up by men, Andrei Brighidin replied that it depends on the sphere in which they are employed. In the defense sector, there is not a high level of use of the right to paternity leave, and this is reflected in the patriarchal approaches that persist, the lack of flexibility. Similar phenomena can be observed in the private sector, Brighidin said.
The director for development at the East Europe Foundation said that the Republic of Moldova has already taken over many practices from countries that have very good gender equality indices, such as gender quotas, paternal leave, mechanisms and methodologies for evaluating functions and occupations through the prism of gender equality. At the same time, says Brighidin, it is also necessary to be aware of the barriers that have emerged in the process of implementing these practices and to take further steps.
"Society will not educate itself unless policy measures, legislative measures, administrative measures are taken, so that equality does not become just a goal without substance, but becomes an everyday reality," said Andrei Brighidin.
The Director for Development at the East Europe Foundation mentioned the need to change the paradigm regarding sex workers, exemplified by the situation in Sweden, which has changed the paradigm and where the person who requests these services is penalized, but not the person who provides them.
Likewise, Andrei Brighidin talks about the need for measures to increase the representation of women on the board of directors, in a leading position in the business sector, the need for a deeper set of measures on the dimension of combating violence against women. Although these have been started, they need to be followed through, the foundation's development director concluded.
The public debate on "Dismantling gender stereotypes" is organized in the framework of the project "IPN News Agency for Social Cohesion and Pro-European Moldova", funded by IMS.
