Equal Opportunities

Creating an enabling environment to achieve equal opportunities and equal chances

Purpose:

Equal opportunity can be described as a fundamental notion for our future. Equal access to education, health care system, entrepreneurship or any other domain is an important contributor to the improvement of any society.

A healthy society is a place where all members are productive and can contribute to the national economic growth. Equal chances are the key to social development in Romania and an important way to ensure the necessary environment so that everyone has a chance to achieve their dream.

Discrimination impedes economic growth and has substantial negative consequences on GDP, but only few of us know about this situation. I will try to mention some of the first problems I encountered when I started fighting against discrimination.

Current situation:

• The Romania’s teen pregnancy rate (12%) is one of the highest figures in Europe;
• Women’s low participation in the labor force costs Romania’s economy a loss of 1.6 % of GDP;
• Female share of seats on boards of publicly listed companies in Romania is around 10% (dropped 5% since 2011), while the estimated EU share is around 24%;
• In Romania, domestic violence is one of the first 30 causes of death among females – a phenomenon monitored by the Ministry of Health;
• Every 30 seconds a woman physically assaulted in Romania, and 3 out of 10 women declare that they have been experiencing physical, verbal or mental abuse;

• Currently, in Romania, harassment is narrowly defined in legislation and for online and school harassment there are no specific legal procedures and ending abuse policies. Also, there is still no specific legislation for mental harassment in the workplace (Labour Code covers part of this issue, but there is no specific legislation).

Suggested measures:

• To create reproductive educational campaigns in order to avoid unwanted or teenage pregnancies and to provide free access to parental planning and to specific health care services;
• To adopt laws and institutional procedures that ensure immediate adoption of legal sanctions for harassment and ending domestic violence practices;
• To adopt laws and necessary institutional procedures regarding protection, assistance and rehabilitation of domestic violence and sexual abused victims;
• To adopt laws and institutional procedures in order to help increase women’s labor force participation rate (wage gap reduction, childcare alternatives for working moms, zero tolerance policy for any form of sexual harassment in the workplace);
• To adopt laws and institutional procedures in order to increase the employment rate of people with disabilities (from professional training courses to more inclusive work environments);
• To build effective public-private partnerships in order to offer mentor programs for women who want an ambitious career regarding leadership positions, entrepreneurship or inventorship;
• To adopt ending emotional, online and street harassment laws, to initiate anti-bullying policies in schools and to implement tougher penalties for any form of abuse.

Please take a look at my parliamentary activity and the legislative initiatives I proposed on equal opportunities, gender equality and ending violence against women.

Together we can make a difference and build the country we all want, so I’m waiting for your suggestions on the issue of equal opportunities.

Also, don’t forget that great things are not made by a single individual! Send any questions or comments you may have.