More than 50 researchers from several European countries, Japan and USA joined the conference in the aim to advance thinking around citizenship and participation from a gender-aware perspective. The papers presented at the conference explored and analysed gender, citizenship and participation in East and West Europe through a number of case studies.

Dr. Silke Roth from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom, discussed the impact of the EU Enlargement process on women’s NGOs in the Central and Eastern Europe. She explained that “during the accession process, women’s NGOs were able to use the EU in order to put pressure on national governments to introduce women and gender friendly legislation and regulations, but after joining the EU, the governments of the new members states realized that there is little pressure of the EU to implement women friendly and gender sensitive policies and regulations”.
She emphasized that although women’s NGOs gained better access to EU bodies and the right to apply for EU funding through the EU membership, they realized that the application for EU resources is complicated, time-consuming and rarely successful. Moreover, the distribution of EU structural funds can be controlled by the national governments. At the same time women’s NGOs lost financial support from previous donors (for example American foundations) who assumed that it was not longer needed and should be spend on NGOs and projects in non-EU countries. As she argued: “while bigger NGOs benefited from these changes, better access to EU funds, smaller NGOs are now struggling for survival”.

If you are interested in hearing more about the topic, do not hesitate to contact scientific communications consultant Ellen-Kristina Kristensen on telephone number  +4... or mail ellenk@ruc.dk

Source web: http://www.cinefogo.org/workpackages/wp12/gender-citizenship-and-participation

Working papers are available to download from the CINEFOGO outcomes database: http://cinefogo.cuni.cz/index.php?&id_result=4023&l=0&w=16&id_event=27