Gender equality in Romania

Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Law on Equal Opportunities between Women and Men
3. Gender equality machinery
a) Commission for Equal Chances
b) The Office of Ombudsperson
c) Consultative Inter-Ministerial Commission on Equality of
Treatment for Men and Women (CODES)
d) The Ministry of Labour and Social Protection
e) Educational institutions working on promoting gender
equality
4. Challenges to gender equality
5. Occupational Gender Composition and Wages in Romania
 Introduction
Promoting equal opportunities for women and men and ensuring full
enjoyment of all human rights is a priority in Romania. Romania’s non-
discrimination legislation has been constantly modernized to incorporate the
most advanced international norms and standards.

The Romanian Constitution stipulates that all citizens are equal before
the law and public authorities, without any privileges or discrimination.

The Law on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men is the only legal
text providing for the principle of equal pay for work of equal value.
 The Law on Equal Opportunities
 

between Women and Men

The Law covers the following areas:

A. Protective measures  
B. Burden of proof in cases of discrimination based on sex
C. Part-time workers
D. Self-employed workers
E.  Parental leave
F. Social security schemes

 The Law on Equal Opportunities between Women and Men offers the legal
framework to solve notices, complaints and denunciations concerning sex
discrimination .
Gender equality machinery
1. In the Romanian Parliament, there is a Commission for Equal Chances and
Treatment, which was founded in 2000

The main functions of the Commission are:

-to eliminate any form of gender discrimination and to improve women’s

conditions in society;
-to integrate the principle of equal chances between women and men in the
legislative initiatives, in policies and programmes including both women and
men;
-to monitor the application of provisions referring to the equal chances and
treatment between women and men within the international documents
ratified by Romania .
 2. The Office of Ombudsman was established in 1997 and represents an
authority under parliamentary control.
The Office of the Ombudsman works in conjunction with the Ministry of
Labour and Social Protection to investigate complaints regarding the equality
of chances and treatment between women and men, to fight against gender
discrimination in the fields regulated by law .
The only statistics about complaints on gender issues are provided by
the Romanian Ombudsman Office. For the year 2003, of a total number of
5400 petitions registered at the Ombudsman Office related to the violation of
the civic rights and freedom, 30 were related to equal rights between men
and women .
A specialized body for gender discrimination does not yet exist in
Romania .
3. At governmental level a Consultative Inter-Ministerial Commission on
Equality of Treatment for Men and Women (CODES) was established to
ensure a permanent exchange of information on the experience and
measures in the field of gender equality.

4. The Ministry of Labour and Social Protection is the public authority

responsible for applying and observing implementation of the present law
regulations in its field of activity.
It is responsible for the development of strategies and policies in the field of
promoting equal opportunities between women and men and eliminating any
form of gender discrimination .
5. Educational institutions working on promoting gender equality.
In Romania both formal and informal educational systems provide courses,
study programs or conduct research in the field of gender issues .

(a) Formal educational system: many universities have courses and

programmes on gender issues (even at master’s level).

(b) Non-formal educational system: are reported to be active in the field of

gender issues and anti-discrimination problems. They organise training
courses, modules, summer schools and other types of gender education.
 Challenges to gender equality
Although Romania has made important steps forward in the field of
gender equality and it is moving in the right direction, the pace is not fast
enough. Speaking about gender issues, one can easily notice that further
efforts are still necessary to improve the situation. Some measures could
include:
-To increase awareness on gender issues;
-To better inform and raise the awareness of people on the protection of their
rights;
-To enhance the transparency (reports and statistics available);
-To raise the financial support at the level of local authorities and local public
administration;
-To deliver an extended and diverse educational offer within the non-formal
educational system;
-To improve the collaboration among specialized organisations and bodies at
all levels;
-To make the agencies and other specialised bodies more visible and active
Occupational Gender Composition and
Wages in Romania
In Romania, the communist regime promoted an official policy of gender
equality for more than 40 years, providing equal access to education and
employment, and restricting pay differentiation based on gender. After its fall
in December 1989, the promotion of equal opportunities and treatment for
women and men did not constitute a priority for any of the governments of
the 1990s.
Given that both the economic mechanisms and the institutional settings
changed radically, the question is if this affected gender equality.
It was made a analyzes about both gender and occupational wage gaps
in Romania before and during the first years of transition.
The results suggest that the communist institutions did succeed in
eliminating the gender wage differences in female- and male-dominated
occupations, but not in gender-integrated occupations, for which the gender
wage gap was about 32%. During the transitions years, this gap decreased to
20-24%, while the gender wage gap in male and female-dominated
occupations increased to 15%.
 Those presents wage differences between occupational groups for men
and women.
These differences represent occupational wage differences that can not
be attributed to gender since men are compared with men and women are
compared with other women.
A general picture that coincides for both men and women is that during
the period before 1989, there was a moving trend towards equalization of
occupational wage differences.
This trend switched direction after 1994 when occupational differences
started to increase.
There seems to be some market mechanisms that generate occupational
differences when there are few regulations on the labor market.
Furthermore, it is the male-dominated occupations that increase in
importance in terms of earnings, and that is true for both men and women.
 The occupational differences are larger for women than for men after
1994. For men there is basically no difference between gender-integrated and
female-dominated occupations, while women in female-dominated
occupations earn less than women in gender-integrated occupations and so
forth.
These are of course overall relative differences that say little about
gender differences in wages, which is something that the empirical analysis
will look further into.
 Conclusion
The EU has an explicit commitment to raising the employment rate for
women and to advance gender mainstreaming and gender equality in both
employment and social inclusion policies.
It seems that Romania would once more benefit from written and spoken
policies about women’s rights and their involvement in the labor market.
I hope that more would be invested in motivating Romanian women
to get involved in well-paid occupations, and girls and young women to
acquire career oriented formal education.
Additionally, more support should be given to all organizations that
support women’s promotion in the Romanian male-dominated society.
 Sources:

http://www.gender-equality.webinfo.lt/results/lithuania.htm

ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp3152.pdf
Thank you for your attention!