The gender equality index shows the Czech Republic in an unflattering light. Again | iRADIO

In the point evaluation, it lags significantly behind the European average. It is 70.2 points. While this year’s score of the Czech Republic is 57.9.

Apolena Rychlíková: The gender equality index shows the Czech Republic in an unflattering light. Again

Compared to last year, the Czech Republic improved in the scoring itself, but by a negligible 0.7 points. The Gender Equality Index measures the status and level of women and men in the labor market, in education, in decision-making positions and in other areas of life.

The director of the Gender Equality Department of the Government Office, Radan Šafařík, said that some aspects of the report are also positive: for example, the reduction of the so-called pay gap, the difference in salaries between men and women. It fell from 22 percent to 15 percent.

The government’s representative for human rights, Klára Laurenčíková, in her statement on the report, stated that gender inequalities are a long-term problem of our society, but according to her, the government of Petr Fiala considers their solution to be one of its priorities.

Pointless barriers

However, similar statements sound too optimistic in the context of the consistently tragic position at the very bottom of the ranking – especially taking into account the significantly conservative tendencies of Petr Fiala’s government.

The result that the Czech Republic has been achieving for a long time is, in a word, a shame. This is well illustrated by two areas: care, in which there are the biggest differences between men and women in the entire European Union, and in the representation of women in decision-making positions. Whether it is in the field of politics, public institutions or company management. Here, the Czech Republic scored only 30 points out of a possible hundred.

How power is distributed in our country has a direct impact on social priorities. When a group is marginalized for a long time, those areas that are more connected to it disappear.

In the case of women and their more equal representation, in addition to the already mentioned care, there are also other issues important for our everyday life: reconciliation, education, healthcare or even the issue of domestic or sexualized violence.

All of them are performed or experienced more often by women. However, at the highest levels, they cannot make decisions about them – and thus not even about their own present and future.

Equal representation is not self-saving, but if it is absent, structural inequalities are further chained and their effects deepen. The more vulnerable members of our society feel this again.

At the same time, it is not just that the state is voluntarily depriving itself of the important social and economic potential that gender equality carries with it. It is mainly about the fact that behind the tables, numbers and graphs there is a whole group of the population that lives worse in our country because the state puts senseless barriers in their way. That group is called simply: women, and they make up half of society.

The author is a columnist and documentarian

Apolena Rychlíková

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