Prague, Dec 16 (CTK) – The Czech Republic has the highest share of women in diplomatic corps (17 percent) of the Visegrad Four (V4) Group, comprising also Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, according to a study mapping the situation at the end of 2014 carried out by their NGOs and released on Wednesday.
However, all V4 countries send primarily men to diplomatic posts, while Slovakia has the lowest share of women (only 7 percent), shows the study of the Czech Forum 50%, the Slovak Democracy in Central Europe the Polish Congress of Women and the Hungarian Women´s Lobby.
“While in Britain, for instance, women have been able to represent their country abroad since 1946, in the V4 countries the first women appeared in diplomacy only after 1989,” Forum 50% says in its press release.
Even after the 1989 collapse of the communist regime, men filled 85 percent of diplomatic posts.
At the end of last year, the Czech Republic had 76 men and 14 women in the posts of ambassadors and it was represented by five men and two women in international organisations.
In Hungary, women occupied 13 percent of 84 positions of ambassadors, in Poland it was 14 percent of 95 posts and in Slovakia 7 percent of 70 posts.
The Czech Republic and Slovakia formed a joint state, Czechoslovakia, from 1918 until its split in 1993.
“Women have a higher representation in international organisations than in bilateral relations. Their share in international organisations amounts to 29 percent, however, there are a considerably fewer posts there [than at embassies],” the authors from Forum 50% said.
According to the joint study, women only rarely head the key diplomatic missions in Germany, the United States, Britain, Russia, China, the EU and the U.N.
