National Action Plans and Equality for Roma Women

The following address by Nicoleta Bitu, an independent consultant to OSI's Network Women's Program (NWP), was presented to the Fourth Meeting of the International Steering Committee of the Decade of Roma Inclusion, October 14–15, 2004. Bitu sought to introduce the position of NWP's Roma Women’s Initiative regarding one of the Decade's "cross-cutting themes"—Romani women.

Specific provisions for Romani women are previewed under the national action plans:

• Bulgaria mentions breast cancer prevention, pregnant women, and the issue of early marriages under the Health section of its action plan.
• Croatia has proposed, under its Education section, action to motivate women to participate in adult education; under Employment, training and employment for women; and in its Health action plan, access to primary health care for pregnant women.
• Hungary addresses gender as part of its equal opportunities policies in all sectors and addresses the need for women’s access to economic programs; it also has a specific chapter on gender equality and how it will be implemented.
• Macedonia is previewing introduction of regular annual medical exams for Romani women, as a health preventive measure.
• Montenegro listed the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women among the international instruments to be considered and makes reference to illiterate parents. Under Education, it indicates actions for preventing girls from dropping out of school and flexible alternative models for “girls who drop out of school to get married.”
• Romania mentions boys and girls as a cross cutting issue under Education, and suggests information campaigns targeting Romani women in preventing breast and uterine cancer under Health.
• Serbia has provisions targeting “increase employability of women” under Employment. 
• Slovakia uses gender-aware language in addressing the primary education of “boys and girls.”

On June 29, 2003, at the Roma Women's Forum in Budapest, organized by the OSI Network Women’s Program, over 100 Roma women activists and their allies created a comprehensive public policy agenda that called for the mainstreaming of Romani women’s issues in all areas of the Decade of Roma Inclusion. The results of the forum and the call for mainstreaming were also presented to prime ministers and high government officials at the closing session in the Hungarian Parliament.

Nevertheless, we now have weak and unmeasurable actions under the national action plans developed by governments for the Decade. The recommendations presented during the forum included addressing stereotypical images Romani women face when in contact with health administrators and teachers, and the initiation of micro-credit for income-generating projects for women (using the models of UNIFEM and the World Council of Churches).

We asked for the mainstreaming of Romani women's issues, not for separation, but instead of gender awareness within all sections of the action plans, we see nothing but superficial and token mention of women’s issues. This raises a crucial problem for us—namely the efficiency of mainstreaming gender in the Decade arrangement.

Furthermore, taking into account the generally weak gender awareness in our societies at large, our recommendation to include gender equality experts in the working groups to help develop the specific indicators and benchmarks was ignored. All themes received special attention in regional workshops such as Health, Housing, Data Collection, Education, and Communication, but no strategic and formal discussion on how to address gender issues took place.

We note the lack of coordination at the regional level among female members of national working groups and take our part of the responsibility for this. Nevertheless, we call on the national governments and International Steering Committee to work with the Roma Women’s Initiative to figure out how to seriously and systematically address issues of women and gender before the Decade launch.