Av Anne Winsnes Rødland
She was one of four guests that visited NIKK from the Baltic countries last week. The three others were Mari Kalkun from Estonia,
who works at the Ministry of Social Affairs in the Gender Equality Department as the Head of Family Policy, Marita Zitmane,
a PhD student and lecturer at the Department of Communications Sciences at the University of Latvia, and Sandra Meskova, PhD
and working as a lecturer at the Daugavpils University in Latvia.
- The way women’s participation in the work force is often regarded as a measure of gender equality, is not as straight forward
as it can seem. In the old Soviet Union all women where supposed to work, so the percentage of Lithuanian women who held a
job was high. After the Union, we experienced a movement among women to be just “normal, western house wives”, tells Margarita.
Even though many women then started staying at home, a lot of the families found it difficult to survive on only one income,
and many women continued working. Therefore, it was not difficult for Lithuania to reach the EU goal of having an employment
rate of 60 per cent amongst women.
- Now we have 63 per cent of our women in the work force. The majority is working full time. That, however, does not mean
that we are good at gender equality, says Margarita. She explains that most women work in the service area and have jobs where
they are paid a low salary.
- There is more poverty among women than among men, and the income gap between men and women is increasing. Especially old
women suffer from poverty. They have had low-paid jobs and have to survive on small pensions. Additionally, they also live
longer than men.
Problems with discrimination
Margarita tells us that 53 per cent of the Lithuanian people believe that women are discriminated in the labour marked.
- It is harder for women to find a job and to keep it. They also experience difficult working conditions. Actually, there
are no area where we have the same salaries for women and men. Even in sectors that are dominated by women, men earn more.
The gap is smallest in the education sector, where men on the average have wages that are 4 per cent higher than what women
earn. But within financial intermediation, for example, men’s salary is 49 per cent higher than that of women.
Of course, there also are a lot of differences among women.
- Single mothers face a lot of obstacles. The poverty rate for this group is over 30 per cent. They do not have much money
to get by on, nannies are expensive and public child care for children under three years of age is not developed, says Margarita.
She explains that even if one in theory has a right to stay at home for two years after having a baby – getting paid 100 per
cent of the regular income the first year and 80 per cent the second – employers often make it difficult.
- They might say that you can choose between parental leave or your job. If you get a leave, you often find that you have
a different, less attractive job when you return.
That is one of the reasons why most women on the whole usually choose jobs that are easier to combine with parental responsibility,
like low-paid jobs in the public sector. Still, the responsibility for children is largely regarded as a women’s job.
Inspiration from the Nordic countries
- But when we started the Center for Equality Advancement in 2003, we got a scholarship from the Nordic Council/the Nordic Council of Ministers to visit Norway, Denmark and Iceland.
That was very useful, and among other things it resulted in two projects on paternity leave after returning to Lithuania.
Those were quite revolutionary projects in our country - how could we speak of men and child care? But now, it actually has
become quite fashionable, at least among famous men, to be seen taking care of small babies, Margarita says.
She already has one idea of a project they can initiate after this visit to Norway.
- We visited Kilden, the conveyer of Norwegian research on gender and gender equality, and they had this exhibition of women’s stories. I think it could be interesting for us to choose hot topics in society and women’s life and make an internet exhibition.
Then we would have broad dissemination, and it would not be an expensive project. Yes, maybe we will arrange something, Margarita
smiles.
