Montenegro establishes the Index of Gender Equality

Ministry for Human and Minority Rights and Statistical Office of Montenegro earlier today signed a Memorandum of Cooperation on the project concerning the Index of gender equality in Montenegro and other joint activities in the field of anti-discrimination, gender equality and minority rights.

Minister Numanovic stressed that the state of Montenegro recognizes the importance of establishing equal opportunities and that in our country a strong legal and institutional framework, which provides an equal opportunity policy from state to local level, has already been established. An equal opportunity policy excludes the traditional views from national development framework and as well as gender perspective in  all policies   programs and institutional reforms.

He said that the indicators are essential for establishment and improvement of further environment for realization of an equal opportunity policy, and that the need to develop a mechanism for monitoring the degree of gender equality has been also recognized.

Since Statistical Office of Montenegro generally follows all development policy, the European Commission has set up the Index of gender equality as such a mechanism.

Director of the Statistical Office of Montenegro, Gordana Radojevic said that so  far  priorities concerning the development of official statistics were related to economic, social and labor questions of the population. Now, at this stage of European integration, there is an open space to begin to develop gender statistics fully in accordance to the European standards.

She noted that the planned Index of gender equality would  measure index of gender equality from 1 (complete inequality) to 100 (complete equality), through six areas: knowledge, work, money, health, time and power.

Development of the Index of gender equality and other statistics in the field of discrimination will contribute to more efficient management of human rights policy as well as transparent and indisputable results in the upcoming period, said Radojevic.

Ministry for Human and Minority Rights