National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic” hosted a large-scale educational and scientific event with the participation of the Head of UN Women in Ukraine, Ms. Sabine Fraser Günes. At the invitation of the Gender Centre of Poltava Polytechnic, the honourable guest gave an open lecture “Promoting Gender Equality and Empowering Women” for students of different structural subdivisions of Poltava Polytechnic as well as interested Poltava schoolchildren (from schools and lyceums #1, 3, 13, 17), during which she presented the achievements and strategies of empowering women in modern society.
The audience joined in a mixed format – offline and online, and the main language of the meeting was English.
Ms. Sabine Fraser Günes holds a PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, UK, a Master’s degree in European Politics and Governance from the College of Europe, Belgium, and a BA in Political Science from Dartmouth College, USA.
The participants of the large-scale event at the leading classical university of our country were welcomed by the First Vice-Rector for Scientific and Pedagogical Work of the National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic” Olena Filonych, who focused the audience’s attention on the relevance of the topic, noting the diversity of the Gender Centre of Poltava Polytechnic’s activities in addressing the issues of gender equality and empowerment of modern women.
According to the speaker, gender equality and women’s empowerment in modern Ukraine are regulated by the prerequisites created for this purpose, and our country is one of the leading ones. In today’s world, men and women are quietly working together to promote key ideas of gender equality in various state institutions as well as in the parliament in order to propose new laws that may relate to this issue.
The Head of UN Women in Ukraine presented the UN’s achievements and key international legal acts for the implementation of gender equality principles, as well as national regulations on ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men in Ukraine.
“Despite different political views, men and women are coming together to address these issues, and we have a number of decisions on the part of the government that relate to gender equality. In your country, Olha Stefanyshyna, who is also in charge of Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, is dealing with these issues. We believe in the day when Ukrainians will finally become members of the European Union, but at the same time, she is the person who deals with all gender equality issues on the part of the Cabinet of Ministers. In addition, I would like to note that most ministries also deal with equality issues, for example, the Deputy Minister of Economy Tetiana Berezhna. These women in the Cabinet of Ministers are advocates for gender equality, making great efforts to create an effective system where deputy ministers do their best to ensure that this equality is respected.
Take Poltava, for example, where gender equality experts can be found in institutions where you wouldn’t expect to find them, such as the Poltava Regional Military Administration. At UN Women, we call such positive phenomena gender engineering, which will work thanks to such experts and create equal opportunities for all.
In Ukraine, there are various international organisations that are developing very dynamically, many NGOs working in this area and trying to eliminate this problem. This line of your society is extremely proactive and you have structures that work together, for example, the “Equal Human Rights and Opportunities” platform. This is a unique phenomenon that Ukraine is such an advanced country in this area, that it has such a developed ecosystem of different organisations working on solving issues and problems of supporting gender equality. You also have institutions such as the Gender Centre, which cooperates with various organisations,” – said the speaker.
According to her, as a nation, we must clearly understand the range of issues that currently exist in the modern world. First of all, we should recognise the fact that the country is obviously in the phase of a full-scale war on the part of the russian federation, and given this difficult situation, we note that men and women, girls and boys experience these social upheavals differently.
The lecturer, who has more than 25 years of experience in programme work in the field of good governance, gender equality, human rights, civil society development, conflict prevention and resolution, focused on the humanitarian support of certain vulnerable groups of the population in the context of a full-scale invasion, citing the following data: 12.5 million people in the country are in need of humanitarian assistance, and women still receive significantly lower wages than men.
“I’m glad that gender plays almost no role in your country at the moment, not affecting the quality of work, for example, at your university. However, if we analyse the different levels of government, we can see that men still outnumber women, since women can take time off for maternity leave and look after children under three, while men, of course, do not do this. If you are a promising scientist and have two children with whom you have spent six years, then those years will simply fall out of your professional path and it will be much more difficult for you to return to what you paused on,” – commented Sabine Fraser Günes.
The open lecture lasted more than an hour with a break due to an air raid alert, which did not prevent the participants from continuing a constructive dialogue with active and conscious young people and reflecting on the solution of gender issues in Ukraine. The participants received a lot of interesting information as well as practical recommendations, and the exceptional meeting was recorded as a memento.
Head of Gender Centre of Poltava Polytechnic Olena Dubynka thanked the honourable guest for communicating with young people and discussing topical problems, contributing to the formation of a new generation of a harmonious society and inspiring them to consistently defend their rights and freedoms.
The coaches of Poltava Polytechnic Gender Centre Nataliia Novikova and Kateryna Hryhorenko stressed that the National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic” was one of the leaders in Ukraine in training the personnel for the restoration of Ukraine, ready to implement a gender-sensitive and inclusive component at all levels and stages of the post-war recovery.
Recently, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Norway and UN Women Representative in Ukraine visited Poltava Polytechnic, the anniversary of the Gender Centre of Poltava Polytechnic was celebrated with a legal awareness conference, 28 students from Poltava region became ambassadors of the Gender Centre of Poltava Polytechnic, and the Gender Centre of Poltava Polytechnic received a package of methodological materials from UN Women.
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