Launch of NEWW EU Gender Watch Report

The Network of East-West Women Polska (NEWW) EU Gender Watch report was launched at a seminar on Tuesday 11 September in Brussels.

The report takes an in-depth look at the situation of women's rights and gender equality in the EU's neighbouring countries, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

In addition to launching the EU Gender Watch report, the seminar also had as its objective to help familiarise women's rights organisations with recent developments in EU development policy and the EU's approach to promoting gender equality and women's rights during the current financial perspective (2007 - 2013). The seminar examined the following questions:

• How can the gender component in the European instruments for development in the CIS be strengthened?
• Is national civil society involved in the process? How can they participate in the implementation of the gender component in the Caucasus, the EU's neighbouring countries and Central Asia?

Click here to download the report

Background

NEWW is concerned about the growing divide between the countries that have been newly integrated into the European Union and those which have remained on its borders. These two groups of countries share a similar history of Communist rule and a socially painful transition into a market economy, a transition which has also greatly affected gender equality. In the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), violence against women, abuses of reproductive rights, discrimination in the labour market and low participation by women in decision-making positions has become a serious issue in recent years.

The EU Gender Watch project has been developed in order to try and improve the EU development policy monitoring and advocacy project to enable NGOs from these regions to engage more effectively with the EU development policy debate.

For more information about NEWW and the EU Gender Watch project, visit the NEWW website.