Prague, July 11 (CTK) – The Czech cabinet on Monday again rejected Human Rights Minister Jiri Dienstbier’s proposal to secure at least 40 percent of positions on election lists of candidates for women.
The proposal was a part of Dienstbier’s draft Action plan for equal gender representation in decisive positions, which the cabinet approved but without the women’s election quotas.
Dienstbier (Social Democrats, CSSD) failed to push through the quotas once before. The cabinet rejected them by the votes of the ANO movement and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) a year ago.
The approved Action plan outlines the tasks until 2018, including measures to raise women’s participation in the high posts in the state administration, state and semi-state companies, schools and science.
It also projects campaigns aimed to make female personalities from culture and sports more visible.
In its policy statement from early 2014, Bohuslav Sobotka’s (CSSD) cabinet pledged to consistently apply the principle of gender equality and it mentioned its support for a higher representation of women in senior positions in this connection.
The centre-left cabinet of the CSSD, ANO and the KDU-CSL then approved an equal chances strategy including the 40 percent quotas for women on election lists of candidates.
“At present, women make up 44 percent of the economically active population of the Czech Republic, and 56 percent of all university students and 61 percent of university graduates. In spite of this, women remain markedly under-represented in decisive positions,” the authors write in the plan the cabinet turned down on Monday.
There are three female ministers in the 17-seat cabinet, less than 20 percent of women among the members of parliament, 27 percent in town assemblies and 12 percent on companies’ boards of directors.
The Czech Republic thus ranks among the EU countries with women’s lowest participation in decision making, the authors wrote.
According to them, the goal of the quotas is not to put one group in advantage but to secure equal access to positions.
