We have reported that Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova is taking part in the 14^th Summit of Women Speakers of Parliament in Uzbekistan’s capital city of Tashkent. Madam Speaker commented on the agenda during the deliberations on the second day of the gathering.

Sahiba Gafarova said that a strong and stable state was unimaginable without women being involved in all the sectors of its social life and that, from this viewpoint, the women speakers had before them the tremendous task of ensuring a more sensitive approach to gender matters on the part of the legislatures that they lead.

As she moved on to speak of employment hurdles that women encounter, the Chair of the Milli Majlis mentioned education as one of the main sources of inequality in employment and of gender-related problems in general. Since we are talking about building an inclusive society now, we ought to pay the strengthening of education and providing legal bases for equal opportunities in it more attention because doing so would help get rid more efficiently of obstacles to empowering women more politically, economically and otherwise, in the opinion of Mrs Gafarova.

She also told her audience of the gender policy successes achieved in Azerbaijan, letting them know that women accounted for more than 48 per cent of the employed population and made close to 28 per cent of the Civil Service staff.

Parliaments are empowered enough not only to pass laws aiming to solve gender-related problems but also to play a part in having those laws implemented, and it is when seen from this angle precisely that parliament-government co-operation takes on so much importance, Sahiba Gafarova continued.

The State Family, Women’s and Children’s Problems Committee established in 1998 is the main body carrying the state gender policy into life in Azerbaijan; the Committee reports to the parliament on its work periodically. The parliament itself has the Family, Women’s and Children’s Issues Committee working on gender-themed laws. Both committees are chaired by women. The process of developing, passing and implementing gender-equality laws is important in the gender terms per se therefore, according to Sahiba Gafarova.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis