16 April 2003 17:03
Equal opportunities bill begins progress through Russian parliament
Moscow, 16 April: The State Duma today adopted the first reading of a draft law, whose authors intend it to help
Russian women defend their rights and freedoms in daily life. The document, entitled "On state guarantees of equal
rights and freedoms for men and women and equal opportunities for realizing them", sets out the main directions of
state policy in the area of sexual equality and also envisages measures to prevent discrimination on gender grounds.
Yekaterina Lakhova, deputy chair of the committee for public associations and religious organizations, who submitted
the draft, said that many negative social features of Russian life, in particular, unemployment, poverty and disease
have long since acquired a clearly "female face". According to the statistics, "women's" pay
across the country is on average only two-thirds of "men's" pay. Two-thirds of the country's
officially-registered unemployed are women. Sex discrimination is also seen in the fact that in almost all areas of
economic and public life the professional and career status of women is considerably lower than that of men. When it
comes to such an important indicator as the representation of women in the legislature, Russia occupies 120th place in
the world.
The draft law the deputies have approved clarifies the constitutional norms that apply and guarantees equal
opportunities for women in the social and economic sphere and in state and municipal service and gives them guarantees
of equal voting rights.
[ITAR-TASS news agency] |
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