In April 1998, the government adopted the programme Priorities and Procedures of the Government for the Enforcement of Equal Opportunities for Men and Women, which characterises the main aims, methods, and procedures in the field of gender policy for the first time. Each year in June a progress report is submitted to the government and updated measures for the given year are approved. The responsible body for this issue is the Government Council for Equal Opportunities of Women and Men operating under the Office of the Government of the CR. The Council has been working since 2001 and it draws up proposals for promoting and achieving equal opportunities, it discusses the conceptual guidelines for government procedure in this area, it coordinates the basic guidelines for ministerial concepts, and it sets the priority areas for ministerial projects, and so on. The Council is made up of representatives of the ministries, unions, academic institutions, and NGOs. ‘Optimising the Institutional Infrastructure of Equal Opportunities for Men and Women in the CR’ (2012-2015) was a project of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs run within the framework of the Structural Funds of the Operational Programme of Human Resources and Employment. The aim is to formulate effective instruments and policies in support of equal opportunities.
The Czech Statistical Office in cooperation with the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic annually publishes a book titled Focus on Women, Focus on Men; the 22nd edition, the most recent one, came out in January 2022. The book examines the differences between women and men in various fields of life in modern society. Most data are for the year 2020, therefore, the first consequences of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic are already emerging in the report. The publication of this book constitutes the Czech Statistical Office’s fulfilment of The Gender Equality Strategy for 2021–2030 (Government of the CR, 2020b).
The publication contains a number of international comparisons and a section with selected results from sociological research on gender issues and data from the research of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MLSA). According to the 2022 version of this publication, in 2020 among people working in the fields of culture, entertainment and recreation, 44.2% (in 2018 48.5%) were women and 47.0% (in 2018 48.4%) were men. In the CR the total employment rate in 2020 among women was 50.3% and among men 66.6%.
The MC does not directly deal with equal opportunities for men and women in its programmes but it supports entities that deal with gender issues – for example in the selection procedure for the ‘One World’ international film festival on human rights. The issue of gender and feminism is generally widely discussed in the CR and there are many non-governmental organisations involved in related activities, such as the Open Society which promote gender equality in the CR through various initiatives. For example, as part of the “Genderman initiative”, they are organizing a competition of the same name, the aim of which is to raise the profile of men who are not only not afraid of gender equality, but publicly support it.
The platform for gender issues is a website Feminismus.cz that also includes the database of the Gender Studies Library, a public benefit organisation, with academic and diploma theses about this topic.
In the CR, gender studies can be studied at the bachelor’s level at the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of Sociology of the Faculty of Social Sciences of MUNI, while the master’s programme is provided by the Department of Gender Studies of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University. There are also separate seminars and courses at various universities and non-profit organisations (Gender Studies, NESEHNUTÍ, NORA, etc.) regularly organise various educational seminars.
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