Publisher: Gender Studies, o. p. s.

Age diversity and age discrimination in the Czech Republic: overview

Author(s): Klára Cozlová / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2011

In the Czech Republic, 45 - 65 years old people comprise over a quarter of the entire population and their employment plays a key role in the country’s economy. The data presented here is based on the official national statistics, which are typically classified by age. Unfortunately, the age categories are not consistent across all types of data. In comparison to the EU, the employment intensity in the Czech Republic is slightly higher than average. The employment rate of the working age cohort 15 - 64 years was 65.2 % (as of 2009). The employment rate of 20-64 years old was 70.7% (while the average rate in the EU was 68.8 %). [...]

Career - Family - Equal Opportunities

Author(s): Vera Kucharová,Štepán Jurajda,Daniel Münich,Katerina Machovcová,Sylva Ettlerová,Olga Nešporová,Kamila Svobodová,Katerina Machovcová / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2007

Dear reader, The following pages provide the results of various studies concerning the position of women and men in the Czech labour market. The analyses were carried out as a part of the EU Equal project “Fifty - fifty: Equal Opportunities for Women and Men” coordinated by Gender Studies, o.p.s, and co-financed by the EU European Social Fund and the Czech Republic state budget. Each study focuses on a topic that had received very modest coverage in earlier research or had not been explored at all. The first paper is a summary of qualitative and quantitative studies carried out by the Research Institute for Labour and Social Affairs team headed by Věra Kuchařová. The team’s objective was to find out the possibilities parents have in juggling childcare and work responsibilities and the potential constraints or sources of discrimination that can make the parents’ situation difficult. They looked at the issue from both the mothers’ perspective and that of the employers. The main focus was on finding out to what extent the parents draw their sick child leave and claim their maternity/parental leave entitlement, which are the basic measures enabling parents to balance their personal and professional lives. One of the main findings is the fact that the facilities allowing people to balance their personal and professional lives are used much less in the Czech Republic than in the vast majority of western countries. In the Czech Republic, the range of the flexible work arrangement possibilities used is narrower and can usually be summed up in three options: reduced working hours, part-time work and flexible working hours. However, they are usually not offered systematically, they do not fall within internal company guidelines and are used solely on an individual agreement basis. In the Czech Republic, it is still mostly women who take parental leave to provide care for children and ensure other forms of full-time childcare. It is rather exceptional to see a father on parental leave, with men representing about 1% of all persons drawing the parental benefit. The reason can be financial (as men have statistically higher salaries), but it can also lie in the unsupportive attitude on the part of the employers who expect that the working hours arrangement facilities should be primarily used by women. [...]

Family Policy: Parental and Maternity Leave in the Context of Work-Life Balance and Equal Opportunities for Women and Men

Author(s): Jirina Kocourková,Linda Sokacová,Alena Krížková,Hana Maríková,Alexandra Jachanová Doleželová,Katerina Machovcová / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2010

Family policy in the context of parenting and equal opportunities is a system of provisions, programs and policies sharing the common goal of supporting families and other types of partnerships. They are financial, material and legislative instruments that influence people’s decisions about family and having children. The foundation of family policy is the form of maternity and parental leave, possibly including the provision of father leave . The goal of family policy in regard to parenting should be the creation of a family-friendly environment in which people can freely decide whether they want to have children and how many. In such an environment people need not worry about their and their children’s socioeconomic situation and about their future, and can therefore freely decide to have as many children as they really wish. In the long term, this approach to parenting support is more effective than temporary pro-population measures which typically aim to stimulate the birth rate of some age groups but do not create stable conditions for parenting in the long run. Creating and fostering a positive environment is also more useful than implementing policy approaches based on penalizing one-child or childless families as some family policy or retirement concepts propose. Family policy that observes equal opportunities principles and promotes work-life balance, allows for a variety of life strategies both for those who decide to balance work and family as well as for those who prefer to look after their families full-time. Neither social group should be neglected or discriminated against – be it by the system of maternal and parental leave or by an associated policy (the retirement system, for instance), as it happens today. A good system of maternity and parental care is grounded in anti-discrimination principles which actively prevent discrimination of parents and other caregivers and promote equal opportunities. Ideally, a family policy that provides equal opportunities does not support only the types of idealized family units that are in accord with the party lines of the governing political party. On the contrary, a fair family policy understands families are dynamic entities that take many of well-functioning and responsible forms. [...]

Gender audit of the EU pre-accession funds 1999-2004

Author(s): Lívia Bíziková,Jarmila Filadelfiová,Alena Králíková,Linda Sokacová / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2005

Looking back into the closed period of the past could be rewarding and important for future decisions. Obviously, the decisions cannot be taken back but their outcomes may be, and often are, relevant in the following years. When it comes to finances and their division among programmes and projects, it is always interesting to assess the priorities and budgets after a certain distance in time to understand the processes and channels they passed through. The EU membership has opened a lot of new challenges for each of the accession countries. During the accession process, the countries had the possibility to finance institutional building or infrastructure development from the EU pre-accession instruments. After entering the EU, pre-accession instruments were replaced by Structural Funds. Economic impacts of the projects financed by all available instruments were relatively well documented and monitored. The projects had significant positive and negative social impact at national and regional level. Because of existing gender roles and stereotypes, the social “impacts” were not distributed equally between women and men. Moreover, the missing gender dimension on the project level helped conservation and strengthening of gender roles. That is briefly the first intent why the joint Czech and Slovak project was initiated in mid-2004. It focuses on analyses of programming documents, and a selected number of foundations re-granting European funds to local projects in both countries. In our analyses, we tried to follow the whole link from adoption of the EU directive, through preparation of national guidelines, to approved projects at national and regional level. [...]

Manuál pro vyučující: jak mluvit o kyberšikaně?

Genderový pohled na násilí v kyberprostoru

Author(s): Anna Dryjanska,Anna Dzierzgowska,Jitka Hausenblasová,Joanna Piotrowska ,Ewa Rutkowska,Agnieszka Sosinska / Language(s): Czech / Publication Year: 2014

In this manual you will find a short theoretical introduction for a better understandingthe problems of cyberbullying and its gender dimension, together with the practical onesinformation and activities that can be used in lessons.

Maternity Leave, or Parental Time? Seven Czech Mothers on Their Experience with Working and Raising Children in Different EU Countries

Author(s): Katerina Jonášová,Pavla Frýdlová,Lucie Svobodová,Mirka Bendix-Beranová,Barbora Šindelárová,Viola Parente-Capková,Zuzana Jürgensová,Zuzana Loubet del Bayle,Hana Schenk / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2012

How to harmonise family and work? How to build a career without losing the chance of a family? In the Czech Republic this dilemma is more poignant than in other EU countries. Its model, where a woman’ s right to a long maternity leave is not supplemented by her right to preschool childcare or to an alternative work arrangement, is outdated in the European context. The lack of preschool facilities prevents thousands of women from returning to work and fathers from participating more in care. Seven Czech mothers with long-term experience from other EU countries, namely Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Sweden, shared stories about their encounters with different types of preschool facilities, with returning back to work and with various patterns of maternity and parental leave, which in those countries is not considered vacation, rather a time designated to both parents. For most women in the Czech Republic becoming a mother means entering a vicious circle. The time a Czech woman spends at home with her child is the longest of all countries in Europe. And it is unique even worldwide. Statistics show that most Czech mothers of one child stay at home for three years, which has a very deep impact on both their professional and personal lives (let alone the alternative where two children in a row keep the woman at home for up to eight years). [...]

Stereotype-Free: Choose Your Career Freely. Activities for Elementary School Projects

Author(s): Jitka Kolárová,Anna Babanová,Jitka Hausenblasová,Tereza Krobová,Irena Smetácková / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2014

Dear readers, we are presenting you with a methodology “cookbook“ which you can use to organize career counselling projects which promote equal opportunities for girls and boys. The goal of this publication is to broaden the range of jobs and education programmes girls and boys consider as their potential career options. We hope to liberate the imagination of young people from the constraints of the traditional division of jobs into jobs for men and jobs for women. The idea that everybody deserves opportunities to put their unique talents to use and to dream freely and without regard to stereotypes about men’s and women’s social roles is fundamental to this book. Studies on decision-making among Czech students show that rather than evaluating their skills and abilities, girls and boys tend to use gender stereotypes to help them choose their future careers (see Jarkovská et al. 2010, Smetáčková 2006, 2007). To reverse this trend, a two-pronged strategy is needed; we have to strengthen career guidance as well as build awareness about the power of gender stereotypes. Better career choices will not only improve the opportunities of girls and boys for self-realization; well considered career choices will also bring employers truly competent workers. With this publication we hope to promote critical thinking and to help people understand how gender stereotypes affect us. Stereotypes can play a positive role in the society – they organize the world for easier orientation. However, we should use them consciously so that we can actually decide whether we want to act according to their dictate or not. We see education as a process of broadening our horizons and learning about the important questions we face in today’s world (such as the issue of the position of men and women in today’s Europe). At the same time, education should always provide space for students to discover their own ways. To meet this goal, our book includes activities to help students reflect on gender stereotypes and to defend their own perspectives. In other words, we seek to facilitate equality between women and men. Our book corresponds with current government strategies and ministerial policy documents (Government Priorities and Procedures to Promote Equality between Women and Men, Ministry of Education Priorities and Procedures to Promote Equal Opportunities for Men and Women). The materials in this book are aimed at elementary school teachers although they can also be used at secondary schools, children’s clubs and other educational institutions for children and youth. Activity descriptions are supplemented by arguments clarifying the fundamental connections between work, career and gender stereotypes. Most of the activities have been field-tested in seminars with real students and have been adjusted for teachers with different backgrounds so that they could use the activities regardless of knowledge of gender studies. We hope that our ideas will help to make your school projects more encouraging for students to see their careers free of gender stereotypes, useful and inspiring. We are interested in hearing from you!

What works, what doesn't: International perspectives on balancing work and care

Author(s): Nina Bosnicová,Jitka Kolárová,Linda Sokacová,Julia Kubisa,Mária Jacková,Olga Pietruchová,Theresa Baumeister,Katerina Jonášová,Pavla Frýdlová,Simona Hanusová / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2012

Dear readers, This publication will present you with examples of work-life balance provisions in several European countries: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany and Poland. International perspectives from countries which are geographically, culturally and historically related to the Czech Republic can lend direction and inspiration to the policy makers who shape the family, social and employment policies in the Czech Republic now and in the future. Although we culturally share many notions on gender roles and the position of women and men with our neighbors, the texts in this publication show there are great differences among the specific policies in each country and their impact on the real lives of women and men. Julia Kubisa from Poland, for example, describes the development of family policy in Poland in the last decade and its effects, including the legal aspects regarding professional babysitting, the abolishment of the parental allowance, and the policy of paternity leave. Good practices in these areas are discussed by Oľga Pietruchová and Mária Jacková, who describe work-life balance provisions and flexible parental allowance mechanisms in Slovakia. In addition, examples from Germany illustrate a well-conceived and stable approach to family policy. A series of interviews with Czech women living abroad gives a comparative perspective on work-life balance policies in different countries and the ways these policies affect families’ choices and living conditions. [...]

Women on the Labour Market: Today and in the Future

Author(s): Vladimír Špidla,Katerina Jacques,Agnieszka Rochon,Ewa Lisowska,Helena Skálová,Alexandra Jachanová Doleželová,Marie Valentová,Radka Dudová,Kairi Talves,Alice Cervinková,Marcela Linková,Monika Bosá,Jasna A. Petrovic,Heike Jensen / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2007

Dear readers, We are pleased to bring to your attention Women on labour market: today and in the future, a book, which is one of the outcomes of the project Fit for Gender Mainstreaming - Gender-Sensitive Transcending of Borders between East and West. Based on cross-border qualification initiatives for multipliers and public events in all countries participating in the “East-West Dialogue”, the goal of the project is to advance gender mainstreaming strategies on a local level and enhance exchange of experiences and qualifications. The publication follows up the international conference Future of Women on the Labour Market, which took place under the auspices of Kateřina Jacques, a Member of Parliament, in Prague in October 2007. Our goal is to assess situation of women on the labour market, refer to persisting inequalities and inspire discussion about the future. We are aware of the fact that gender equality policies need a thorough evaluation to prevent biased application, which may lead to cementing gender stereotypes instead of disrupting them. Our texts address not only decision-makers, but they also represent a call for solidarity between women, since its lack often stands for a barrier in achieving equality. Thus, we decided to focus some of our current activities especially on women.