March – June, 2007

Series of workshops: “Women’s rights and measures against discrimination”

Target group: Women from the villages: Kalishta, Vranishta, Radolishta, Moroishta, Veleshta and Oktisi.
Womenfrom the rural areas in RM still live in a very patriarchal setting, where only male children are valued as humans, whereas women are treated only as reproduction or working tools. Their male counterparts very often deny them the right to education and employment. Although nowadays the situation is not so grim, there is still a necessity to work on the emancipation of women from these regions, since early marriages, arranged marriages, or marriages from interest are still present, as well as family violence and discrimination. The last surveys have shown that every 4th woman in RM has been a victim to some kind of family violence.

Therefore, empowering women with knowledge on their rights and institutions where they can turn for help if needed was the focus of six small workshops that were organized by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Organization of Women in Struga. The main topics of the workshops were three important issues: Early marriages, family violence and discrimination of women.

Throughout the workshops one could note significant differences between Macedonian and Albanian women. Macedonian women are having typical life of farmers, and the landscape of the villages is also typical for people that live from agriculture. Women look quite worn out from work, although their age was between 18 and 50. On the other side, Albanian women are more at home, taking care only of their family; they look rested, nicely dressed and well protected. Albanian villages are full of fairy tale looking houses and it is obvious that they even rarely keep chicken it their yards. Majority of the men in Muslim villages are working abroad.  

There is an interesting difference between the mentalities of women from different Albanian villages. Women from one of the villages seemed less religious, more open, and less under surveillance of the village leaders. The workshop was held in a local hotel, they came in larger number, and were more open to discussion. On the contrary women from the other village, both this year and in the previous years, seemed to be under control. On both occasions two specific women were present. One of them was acting as a female political leader, and the other seemed as a female religious leader. Whatever the trainers were speaking of, she would interrupt and remind the women of the laws of the Koran. 

Women from one of the Albanian villages have achieved some degree of equality. Early marriages in this village are not characteristic any more. Almost 95% of girls finish high school education and around 50% continue to higher education (This is not official statistics, but personal evaluation from one of our participants, teacher of mathematics in one school). Women consider this to be a big success in their striving toward equal treatment. Despite this, women are rarely employed, and if they are, they face economic control from their spouses or in laws. Additional problem has arisen due to the general unemployment in the country. That is, almost 90%* of marriages in the last two years were made with young people that have permanent residence and employment in the EU states or the USA. This means that immigration of young people from this village is significant.

The workshops went well and interest was demonstrated for the shelter centers for abused women that are currently being created, which indicates that family violence happens there quite often. The appearance of Vahabits is perceived as a threat that may reduce their hard won freedom to at least go to school and work out of the home, if they can get employed. However, in the villages with Albanian population Vahabits approach is not or very rarely accepted. On the contrary, it seems that accepting Vahabits is more prevalent in villages with Macedonian Muslim population.

On all of the workshops women took active participation and gave many examples from their lives. They were especially interested in the part how to protect themselves and their daughters from further pressure of their environment and be more assertive for their rights. On the evaluation they stressed that more seminars like this would help them in their struggle for equality. However, their overall attitude was “You should also talk about these issues to our husbands”. This attitude indicates that they still do not have enough courage to address the problems of discrimination within the family, and stronger social action is needed to overcome traditional attitudes towards women in this region.