At the beginning of September 2017, the FemCities Conference titled »Women’s rights, religion and refugees: European cities between welcome culture and rejection« was held in Vienna attended by a representative of the City of Ljubljana.

Since 2015 the City of Ljubljana has been a member of the FemCities Network, coordinated by Vienna. It is a network created in 1997 bringing together European cities with the aim of addressing gender equality, human rights and other questions in relation to women equality in public life.

The representative of the City of Ljubljana, who is also the equal opportunities coordinator, took part in the conference addressing the topic of migration through the prism of gender equality. Some good practices of cities were presented – for instance, mentorship of migrant pregnant women and young mothers by migrants educated in different professions who have been living in the new country for several years; a special program for migrants who have been are victims of domestic violence or violence during the migration; and the establishment of a special centre for LGBT migrants.

The current state of affairs in Hungary was also presented at the conference where the debate on gender equality is practically non-existent or is conducted in the wrong context, and the situation in Slovenia which can take pride in three success stories from the past few years: the ratification of the Istanbul Convention (the City of Ljubljana took active part in the campaign), the unchanged system of access to free birth control (here again the City of Ljubljana publically supported its retention) and the increase of retirement benefits for all women to a minimum of 500 euro.

Gender equality is one of the topics which has to be constantly worked on and discussed. The City of Ljubljana is also going to work intensively in this area in the coming months – for instance, in November we are marking the day for the elimination of violence against women, and we are also going to motivate primary school children to present their view on the (balanced) division of home chores between family members.

Photo (translation): Vienna’s poster on stereotypes
Stereotype: »Every woman needs a man to protect her.«
Journalist and activist Gloria Steinem responds: »A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.«