My presentation* will look at the macroeconomic trends in the Western Balkans region and their effects on women's rights, and then try to identify obstacles to women's  economic and social position and openings to improve them. The story is basically one of the stripping away of human rights / women's rights to make our countries more attractive for investors. A great deal of energy is being put into attracting investment: for instance, on my way to this conference I noticed, in a recent copy of the Financial Times, two whole pages on Albania, all angled in such a way as to interest investors, together with several ads for foreign banks.

The countries of the region are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Albania, with a total population of 24 million. GDP per capita was €2,380 in 2002, with only Croatia above the average; while foreign direct investment (FDI) has risen from 3.9% of GDP in 2002 to 5.4% in 2003. Superficially, the impact of FDI is visible in the large presence of foreign banks, but its main economic impacts are on domestic investment, employment and the balance of payments. Albania, Croatia and Macedonia are already members of the WTO, while Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro are in the process of acceding to the Organization. The region enjoys duty-free access to the EU market, thanks to the asymmetrical trade measures granted since the end of 2000.

Macroeconomic trends and their effects

The impact of the international financial institutions (IFIs) is high in the region. They support the structural reforms through macroeconomic support and technical assistance. IMF programmes in are in place in all the countries, and the World Bank provides technical and financial assistance with a wide array of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs). The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) finances mainly private-sector development, although in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro it works mostly with the public sector.

The transitional economies of the region have a number of common characteristics, many of these arising from their common experience of structural adjustment. Throughout the region, transition to the market economy has been delayed because of wars, armed conflicts, and exclusion from the international community during the periods of conflict. The region's SAPs, dictated by the IMF, have features familiar from previous SAP experiences in other regions, requiring:

You can imagine who pays the price for all this economic turbulence! The example of Serbia and Montenegro serves to illustrate what is happening throughout the region. The transition to a full market economy in the country has been very rapid and unsettling. In the 1990s, Serbia and Montenegro had a state-led, quasi-market economy. In 2000, political changes led to economic changes and a SAP was started, geared to the development of a market economy based on privately-owned capital and trade liberalisation.  A new wave of privatisation was introduced; even after failed exercises in privatisation 1990 and 1997, this is still seen as a panacea for all our economic problems. This round is based on tender privatisation, involving selling through tenders and auctions and capital transfer without compensation.

The results anticipated from all this privatisation were:

However, this has not really materialised. At the macroeconomic level, the results so far include:

At the same time, the following effects on the population can be observed:

All this, plus the consequences of the armed conflict of the 1990s, has generated rising poverty and polarisation of wealth. While the percentages of the population living in poverty have risen from 14% in 1990 to 35% in 2003, some 5% of the population have become extremely rich, profiting either from the economic upheavals or from war. The middle class has almost disappeared. Those in need of social protection include:

However, the budgetary support to underprivileged people has dropped from 16.7% (1995) to 11.7% currently, while a share of the budget in the social security funds has also fallen sharply from 22,2% to 13,3%. Social welfare support is provided mostly by donations from the developed countries. The result is poorer health care and quality of life for citizens.

The transition represents a fierce attack on economic rights. New laws on labour and on employment abolished or decreased many long-established rights and entitlements. Full employment is no longer guaranteed, and introduced flexibilisation of labour, seen as an important feature of the economic reforms, means that many full-time jobs have been replaced by part-time, temporary, seasonal and low-paid jobs. Since the mechanisms to regulate the private sector and force companies to fulfil their legal obligations to workers are weak and are not enforced, companies get away with many violations, such as non-payment of salaries and social security benefits, irregular contracting procedures, and so on. Labour inspection is weak, and the special courts that dealt with labour rights, which were free for workers, have been abolished; instead, workers claiming their rights must go through a very long, expensive and ineffective procedure in the regular courts.

Meanwhile, social dialogue between the private sector, government, and workers is lacking. The trade unions are weakened and declining in influence; in fact, they hardly exist in the growing private sector, where employees are often blackmailed by employers not to organise trade unions.

This situation is the same throughout the region. In Croatia, for instance, the average wage is enough to cover only 65% of a family's basic costs, while a third of employees receive the minimum wage. Pension and healthcare funds are facing collapse, and social differences are increasing. In Macedonia, poverty has increased fivefold since 1991.

The impact on women's rights

Using Serbia and Montenegro again as an example, the following basic statistics give a broad picture:

Overall, the impact of the transition has not been good for women. The socialist gender ideology and gender equity is currently regarded as a part of the repressive socialist system that has been overthrown. These ideological changes influenced new legislation and deprived women of the incentives they had previously been granted by the socialist state. The new democratic governments now support women's right to stay at home. In this and other ways, the transition has encouraged a patriarchal ideology that pushes women back into the home.  

Thus, women are the first to lose jobs, particularly higher-level and better-paid jobs, and particularly in industry, as a result of privatisation. More and more women are working in low-paid industrial and service sectors, with a growing  pay equity gap. Women's unemployment has increased, and at 26% it is higher than men's unemployment (20%), while there are decreasing opportunities to find jobs, especially for women over 40–45 in the private sector. The feminisation of poverty is thus gathering pace, as women have lost the benefits of previous social welfare system. Women are more likely than men to be exposed to poverty, because the support of children depends mainly or totally on women; and they are more likely to be poor in old age as a consequence of the higher unemployment rate and the gender-based income gap. With growing poverty, sex trafficking and domestic violence are increasing. The needs of many of the most vulnerable groups of women (Roma, rural, minority, self-supporting mothers, elder, housewives, disabled) are invisible and unmet.

Women's position in the economy is very largely as employees, on an increasingly insecure basis. At least twice as many men as women are employers, with women accounting for only 30% of employers (i.e. founders/cofounders of an enterprise or a shop). Almost no privatised firms have been bought by women. Women are impeded in becoming entrepreneurs by poor access to bank loans, capital and resources. Being underrepresented in the privatisation process, women were usually not informed of their rights. e.g. to free shares.

As employees, moreover, women find their rights systematically ignored. Private-sector employers prefer to hire women, because they are considered to work harder, cause less trouble, and be readier to accept subordinate positions despite having greater expertise; they often perform jobs beneath their educational level. Employers also prefer to hire young women, so there are few or no jobs for women over 45. Many women work without a contract, without paid pension, social security or healthcare security, and without protection at work.

Barriers to women's advancement

In this context, there are a host of barriers to women's advancement. Underpinning them all is the persistence and strengthening of the dominant patriarchal society. Such barriers include:

Rights

Development planning

Social barriers

Achievements and opportunities

This list of barriers is daunting, but there have been some achievements and there are some opportunities for building on them. All governments in the region are now under pressure of the EU to harmonise legislative accordingly the EU standards and to adopt measures to promote gender equality and end sex-based discrimination, set quotas for women's political participation, and so on. The process of introducing law on equal opportunities between women has started. The process of building national, regional and local machineries for the advancement of women has also begun, thanks to pressure from UN agencies, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Stability Pact Gender Task Force and women's groups. Gender concerns are, in theory at least, integrated into the PRSPs.

There are also openings and opportunities for advocacy by women's groups and human rights groups. Research on the gender dimensions of poverty and of macroeconomic issues such as trade liberalisation, SAPs, etc., is important and necessary. Housework and the care economy need to be taken into account in economic analysis and planning, and gender-sensitive indicators need to be designed.

The development of pro-poor budgets and gender budgets is a key instrument for fulfilling women's economic rights. A new gender budgeting initiative in the CEE/NIS region launched in 2003 by the Network East-West Women is promoting strategies and activities to popularise gender budgeting as a tool for achieve gender equality in the labour market and employment and for addressing domestic violence, etc.

Strengthening mechanisms for enforcing ILO standards will help to counter the growing discrimination against women in employment and entrepreneurship. Regional monitoring mechanisms (e.g. ombudspersons) could be set up to do this. Gender concerns should be integrated into development policies, within a general rights-based approach to development that includes women's rights. Women's organisations in the whole region are eager to develop this approach as a counterweight to the prevailing profit motive.

* Presentation at the WIDE Annual Conference 2004 "Globalising Women's Rights: Confronting Unequal Development Between the UN Human Rights Framework and WTO Trade Agreements", Bonn, Germany, May 2004
Published in the WIDE's Conference Report "Globalising Women's Rights: Confronting Unequal Development Between the UN Human Rights Framework and WTO Trade Agreements"
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