Estonia to Invest in Gender Equality
According to what reported byt Eesti Päevaleht and LETA, the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs is going to organize a media campaign to promote equal treatment between genders in relation to remuneration.
The Minisrty of Social Affairs spokeswoman Eli Lilles pointed out that, according to Eurostat, Estonia had the biggest job-related segregation in the EU in 2007: women earn an average of 30.3% less than men in Estonia while the EU average is 17.4%.
She added that -The aim of the media campaign is to draw the attention of people to gender equality in Estonian working life.
The cost of the campaign will be around 1 million kroons and 85 percent of the money will come from EU structural fund means.
Estonia is the country, all over Europe, where there’s the biggest difference in terms of wages between men and women.
According to the past year’s report on gender equality issued by the International Economic Forum in Estonia, women’s wages are about 60 percent of the men’s that have the same job.
Last year Estonia confirmed its 37th position in the overall rating of gender equality. The top four positions about this issue were assigned to Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden, on the basis of 14 different indicators.
The 37th position means that Estonia was ranked in the lowest position among the Baltic countries; Lithuania holds the 30th position and Latvia the 14th.
That is good news and urgently needed, but as long the laws are not changed in this regard to especially protect families from violence, this is only the tip what need to be done.
Well, I do understand that Estonia faced a lot of budget cuts to join the Euro and did not miss that this country has to resolve major economic problems, but in a crisis, discrimination against women becomes more obvious and I do think that this gives not a good picture of this country, nor it will stop the emigration fo women and families in this country to make their fortune elsewhere and this times we are not talking anymore about the "disposable" construction workers that are coming back now, but we face an emigration of well educated women that can find a job elsewhere even in crisis