Croatia. Challenges for the development of gender politics

In the last decade, development of gender politics and improvement of the status of women in Croatia has been parallel to legislation and adjustment of the existing laws, in the context of the process of pre-accession to EU, which Croatia recently completed.  In this sense, it is primarily important to highlight the existing solid infrastructure for the promotion of gender equality, and an extraordinary activity of the office of Gender Equality of the Croatian Government, as well as the Gender Equality Ombudsperson. (1) 

The data and trends reviewed in this article show that achievements in the development politics of gender equality has, in some areas, attained or come close to those of EU 27. However, further analysis also leads to identifying the key points of future challenges posed by the imperatives of improving the employment opportunities for women, their economic equality, their better representation in the position that include decision making, and development of specific action plans on combating violence against women, especially against family violence.

Some positive achievements concerning the development of the policy of gender equality and its impact on women’s position in Croatian society should be stressed.  Thus, for example, tertiary education attainment in 2012 for women was 17% compared to 14.5% for men aged to 64 years. It is important to note that women’s enrolment in tertiary education has been continuous in recent years. Also, there are 48% of women among university professors, 57% among the holders of doctoral degree, and the same percent among college and university students.

Women’s participation in decision making is in some instances very close to EU27 average in the recent period (Figure 1). 

There were improvements over the last decade, with the participation of women in the 2009 elections reaching 22% among government representatives at the county and city levels (2). Concerning women’s participation in managing the largest quoted companies, there is a similar situation like in Eu 27. Different however is the women’s participation in managerial positions of the Croatian central bank where, excluding a a peek in 2009 (14%), the presence is stable at 7% in 2010, 2011 and also in 2012.  

As for the status of women in the labor market, women made 50.9% of the employed  in 2012 (Figure 2).  They took over majority of jobs in the health services, higher education, and judiciary, but not the leading positions in these fields. The age group that was most vulnerable to employability in 2012 was that between 55 and 64 years of age, with very low employment rate for women (27.8%) compared to men (46.7%). The women of this age group are largely either unemployed for an extended period of time, or retired with very low retirement income because they took the opportunity of early retirement.  Thus they belong to the population group with the highest risk of poverty. The estimations are that the risk of poverty for the women above 65 years of age is 9.2 pp (38.3%) higher than for the men in same age group. In this regard special measures were introduced my Ministry of Labor and Pension System that will be implemented and it includes higher pension raises for these women after reaching the age of 65. 

In order to make the best use of potentials for women’s employment it is necessary to stimulate women’s self-employment. In Croatia, women’s entrepreneurship remains an undeveloped potential, even though the importance of women entrepreneurs as important generators of new jobs is acknowledged as policy level. As several strategies documents issued by the government pledge to introduce active measures to promote female entrepreneurship, a more dynamic implementation of these measures is to be expected now that Croatia become a member of the EU. Therefore it is necessary to support additional measures that would include the greater involvement of Croatia Employment Service, particularly on local levels and its connection with educational and research centers in order to ensure professional guidance and support for women’s entrepreneur initiatives on local levels. It is particularly important for senior unemployed women and for creation opportunities for their return to the labor market.

The problem of relatively low activity rate of women is of structural nature and it is obvious that it could not be solved by only the anti-discrimination guarantees required by the Law on Gender Equality. Last year announced changes within Labor law with legalizing part-time work and work from home, including tele-working, could improve women’s position on labor market, particularly due to their personal and family responsibilities. Last data (for 2012) shows that the share of women working part time was only 10% and decreased compared to 2011 (12.4%), while for women in EU 27 was 32.6% (Figure 3.) So, this opportunity should be strongly developed and recommended as a chance for overcoming unemployment of young women with more family responsibilities and of senior women who become long-term unemployed and with poor prospects for full-time employment.

This opportunity is started to be promoted as initiative for supporting flexible working hours, as it has been recommended by Office of the Ombudsman for Gender Equality, and announced as a new policy to improve women’s position on labor market by new Labor law. Parallel with these initiatives there were some improvements within new Law on Child Care Providers related to current formal childcare improvements as well as to new opportunity for women employment, and this also presents activities planned to be implemented through National Employment Promotion Plan. Namely, there is estimation about a large number of engaged nannies without legal registration and these women will be trained, certified and registered as such. 

Although the official average of gender pay gap is 10.9% and is lower than in the EU27, this difference is greater in some sectors with predominantly female labor force, such as insurance and financial business (29.3), health and social care (25.5) and the processing industry (21.8). The link between gender-based segregation in the labor market and the wage gap can be seen also from the fact that in 10 areas of activity with above average wages women make up the majority of employees in only three area (7:3) in favor of men).  

In addition to the listed critical issues in the socio-economic situation of women in Croatia, there is another sphere of particular interest and increasing focus regarding the improvement of gender equality: combating violence against women, and especially against violence within family. This topic became one of the most discussed in political debates on gender issues in recent months, following the obligation to implement measures of the National Gender Equality Policy. Also, through activities of National Employment Promotion Plan oriented on increasing employability of women and disadvantage groups, and supported by European Social Fund, there was positive trend in employment of women victims of domestic violence in 2012. 

1) Their roles in performing professional and administrative activities related to gender equality achievements is particularly concerned the initiation and implementation of the numerous studies about women’s position on labor market and in supporting civil society sector in performing public awareness campaigns on gender equality.

2) As the government postponed the application of the Gender Equality Law, women’s chances in the 2013 local elections were not supported by the requirements that female candidates should reach at least 40% of the total. As a result just 17% of women were elected as representatives at the local level, up to 21% at the county level and only 7% among town and city mayors as well as county prefect.