I had sent out about 30-40 emails to different organizations in Macedonia, mainly women’s non-governmental organizations. I got one response in three weeks. Later I called the main organization I wanted to work with before I got over here to follow up on my email and they said “Yes we got your email” *pause* “We will respond with in the day. Sorry.” Needless to say, I just met with them and didn’t offer to actually complete any other in person research, which is sad, because they are one of the best online organized companies and I had great hopes, but if that is how they actually treat people offering free labor and their sense of business response then I would go stir crazy within one day there!
But back to the organization that responded the first time I tried to reach them, the only one remember. Their name is „Акција Здруженска“ or “Akcija Zdruzhenska” which means “Women’s Action Association” roughly. According to their website they: “Akcija Zdruzenska works on strengthening and developing the women’s movement in Macedonia, competent in terms of women’s human rights and gender equality issues, in compliance with the global commitments and needs in this field. Organization’s basic determination is to strengthen knowledge, skills and ability for identifying and reacting to the specific needs in Macedonia in the light of gender equality.”
I meet with almost their entire office staff, and in a effort to maintain anonymity, I will be quote them without referencing who they were. This research took place on October 3, 2011 at 10am Skopje time. They had given me the address, but since I couldn’t find it on a map, I got into a cab and told the cab driver the address. He looks at me and starts to pull out his map. I then start to laugh and offer to call the people I am meeting and have him talk to them. They were very willing and told him where to go, since he understood the directions, off we went!
On our way there, he started asking me questions about what I was doing in Skopje, what I thought of the country, and so on. I am pretty sure I got across that I was studying on a US Embassy grant, but separate from the embassy and that I would be here for 9 months, and that I had almost been in the country for one month. Also, that I really liked Skopje and the people were really nice! We arrived safely at our destination, which was this itty bitty little street that was on the map, but not labeled (I found this out when I went back home to see where I had been.)
When I got into their office, they offered me tea or coffee like everyone does around here, but all I wanted was some water. I had brainstormed a few questions to ask them, but I didn’t really need them. I asked a few open ended questions and just nodded (thanks Dr. Fewkes for teaching me that interviewing tip!) and we talked for almost 2 hours before they had to go for a meeting with some official.
I met with four women in the room, and we sat at a boardroom style table with many chairs around it. There were bookcases filled with books, publications, printed papers, and flyers lining the wall immediately across from the door way. The room was small, holding only the table, chairs and bookcase, but the space was well utilized. Off one side there was a small balcony where they often went to smoke. I counted four rooms, including the meeting room, two offices with many desks in there and a small kitchen off the side of boardroom. All of the rooms were small by American standards, and even a bit small by Macedonian standards, but still well maintained and nice for office space.
The main lady I talked to, we will call her Sally, is the one almost all of the quotes are attributed to. She was fluent in English, well almost fluent. Every now and then she had to ask the others for a word or two, but other than that, perfect!
Sally sees the NGOs in Macedonia (MK) as an intermediary between the government and society. Akcija Zdruzenska is more of a lobbying organization than direct services organization. They like to support local women’s organizations and try to bring their voices to a national level.
Their main problem is with access to information and the cooperation between NGOs and local governments. Sally claims that the government (and by this, she usually means the national government) is only open for cooperation on certain projects that they initiate. Then, the projects become a way of perceiving the achievement of the government (and thus the party) rather than the individual NGOs or the cooperation between the two. Sally claims that after the project is over, the government will forget about the NGO.
Akcija Zdruzenska wants to monitor the implementation and development of policies that try to identify the gaps between the legal situation and the actual situation. The government is not happy, Sally claims, with their NGO due to the critical nature of their work. Yet, still Akcija Zdruzenska works towards standardizing cooperation with the government, on paper at least. But in practice, the standardization has a long way to go. A few of the questions that must be answered are Who represents civil society to the government or the public? How can the NGOs network or cooperate? Which platforms do they all support?
The government would work with an organization for a few years to provide advice or services. Sometimes the government would even provide funding to these (other) organizations, then elections would come and they would switch to a different organization, often times created specifically for this purpose, that would promote the parties ideals with no hesitation if the original organization would not support their campaign.
Speaking of elections and the government, “neither the issue of gender equality or women’s rights are not treated the way they should be treated in these platforms.” They have tried to create issue based platforms but the problem, in their eyes, is that many of the other NGOs that believe in the same thing they do are not very well developed. Their problems in creating a group of women’s NGOs has lead to an even further “lack of solidarity between women’s groups” which is problematic since they all compete for funding from very limited sources.
Sally said that the European Union has been pushing for an mechanism of formal cooperation between NGOs/civil society and the government, but it only recently ended with a Code of Conduct. That was for the National government, but it is different with the local government because they are more independent.
We then switched gears (and this interview took place when I was still searching for just women’s groups to work with, so some of the questions are along that line, like the ones that follow) to discuss women’s rights in Macedonia. Sally claims that women’s rights is not high on the agenda for the current government, that it is present in the discussion at all because someone is asking about it. Women rights groups receive almost no funding from the government, the only funding comes from international donors. On paper there is a law against sex or gender discrimination, but not in practice since there is no monitoring of their . There is a “huge gap between promises and expectation.”
Sally believes that the government discounts women’s NGOs as lacking the ability to actually implement changes. Even though on paper, the women’s groups across the country have a large list of supporters, the government only reaches out to them at election time. Further, the governments believes that the women’s NGOs are not even relevant to the discussion since they lack knowledge about the ‘real world.’ The first women’s NGOs were not feminist in nature and could not even be called a movement, according to Sally. In the beginning, women’s NGOs were the largest in number, but their limited success (legally) was due to a lack of specifically requested rights. Sally even claims that some NGOs ended up in or with the structures they were working against (a hierarchy of sorts).
On top of all of difficulty outlined above, it is even more difficult to mobilize around a specific issue. An example they provided was abortion a few years ago. Different organizations tried to go to the streets to collect signatures, but it was hard to mobilize people for public speaking or even standing together. When pressed for why it was so difficult, they theorized that people were not ready to be publicly challenging the government. As well as the relative ease of being linked to the opposition of the current party in power. The government (read party, for this discussion) also began funding specific NGOs that no one had heard of before that specifically supported the government side of the issue, no other ones were funded. In fact, this is a problem that they saw in the NGo sector: NGOs that pop up around elections to support a specific cause and then disappear immediately after it.
With a specific focus on the national government/party in power, they believe that the government is pro-life/pro-family. The government has begun to roll back many of the success that the women’s rights movement had made in the past few years, or rather these success stories are being seen as being “taken away” by the legislature and are now seen as “highly problematic.” It is forbidden to mention sexual orientation and gender in the legal government. However, the current party in power, VMRO, has added religious eduction in school even though MK is supposed to be a secular country, Sally alleged.
In a policy to increase the birth rate and population of MK, the government has started to reward parents for having a 4th or 5th child.They will receive ⅔ of their expenses, which is higher than most salaries. It was meant to only be for the areas were birthrate is low (AKA ethnic Macedonians only), but the constitutional court ruled that this was unconstitutional. Now the government only give extra money for the 3rd child only for 18 years, and it is 70% of the average salary. In addition, if the woman has never worked outside of the home, but raised 3 or 4 kids when she reaches 62 she is entitled to a full pension. Sally called this “crazy!” [Meaning I think, the idea that she would get a full pension if she works only as a mother and that if you do not have children that you are NOT entitled to a pension.]
Sally says that the new government is trying to keep a low profile but traditional values and the role of the family is emphasized to the detriment of transgendered individuals. The government is creating a hostile environment, Sally charges.
There have been numerous challenges to the different laws in MK, meaning that the government is trying to change the law that is on the book, rather than from the public against a law. Such as the attempt to define marriage (as between a man and a woman), while there is a definition of this in the Family Law section, the government wanted it in the Constitution.
There is a gap between men and women’s rights. At least in the implementation, as well as in the law. Sally suggested that this could be a hold over from the Socialist past where people were declared equal (even when they were not). She also claimed that many women did not know that they were not equal. Many people perceive that men and women are currently equal. In addition, there are other issues that are considered more important- such as ethnic minorities- before women’s rights are considered.
Yet, Sally and the others wanted to point out that there are connections between the different forms of discrimination and that if the political discourse was open about one form (ethnicity) it should also apply to the other forms (sex, gender, etc). Since marginalized groups are not considered important to women’s issues, it is even harder to get women’s rights on the political agenda.
Sally suggested...
- that networks of women’s organizations be formed to facilitate discussion and interaction to better serve the women of MK.
- organizations should help the government formulate laws, but not produce them with in the NGO because they do not have the jobs or resources
- organizations should demand that the government do it’s own job and develop policy (currently she believes this is done outside of the government by many organizations who produce the laws and then give it to the government members, who present it to parliament.)
-there should be more cooperation with collecting the public opinion to write legislation.
Since they view themselves as a ‘watch dog style’ organization, it is very hard to fund raise and requires institutional funding (which they d not have). Institutional funding would give Akcija flexibility in the business affairs to do their job properly.
Also, Sally believes that the government (especially the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy) believe that that they have an “open door policy” and that is enough forms of cooperation. That organizations should come to them, rather that the Ministry going to different organizations. Sally believes that the government needs to be proactive in consultations where exist. That the government invites a few different NGOs for a few hours and then say they have consulted with the NGO sector.
But back to the organization that responded the first time I tried to reach them, the only one remember. Their name is „Акција Здруженска“ or “Akcija Zdruzhenska” which means “Women’s Action Association” roughly. According to their website they: “Akcija Zdruzenska works on strengthening and developing the women’s movement in Macedonia, competent in terms of women’s human rights and gender equality issues, in compliance with the global commitments and needs in this field. Organization’s basic determination is to strengthen knowledge, skills and ability for identifying and reacting to the specific needs in Macedonia in the light of gender equality.”
I meet with almost their entire office staff, and in a effort to maintain anonymity, I will be quote them without referencing who they were. This research took place on October 3, 2011 at 10am Skopje time. They had given me the address, but since I couldn’t find it on a map, I got into a cab and told the cab driver the address. He looks at me and starts to pull out his map. I then start to laugh and offer to call the people I am meeting and have him talk to them. They were very willing and told him where to go, since he understood the directions, off we went!
On our way there, he started asking me questions about what I was doing in Skopje, what I thought of the country, and so on. I am pretty sure I got across that I was studying on a US Embassy grant, but separate from the embassy and that I would be here for 9 months, and that I had almost been in the country for one month. Also, that I really liked Skopje and the people were really nice! We arrived safely at our destination, which was this itty bitty little street that was on the map, but not labeled (I found this out when I went back home to see where I had been.)
When I got into their office, they offered me tea or coffee like everyone does around here, but all I wanted was some water. I had brainstormed a few questions to ask them, but I didn’t really need them. I asked a few open ended questions and just nodded (thanks Dr. Fewkes for teaching me that interviewing tip!) and we talked for almost 2 hours before they had to go for a meeting with some official.
I met with four women in the room, and we sat at a boardroom style table with many chairs around it. There were bookcases filled with books, publications, printed papers, and flyers lining the wall immediately across from the door way. The room was small, holding only the table, chairs and bookcase, but the space was well utilized. Off one side there was a small balcony where they often went to smoke. I counted four rooms, including the meeting room, two offices with many desks in there and a small kitchen off the side of boardroom. All of the rooms were small by American standards, and even a bit small by Macedonian standards, but still well maintained and nice for office space.
The main lady I talked to, we will call her Sally, is the one almost all of the quotes are attributed to. She was fluent in English, well almost fluent. Every now and then she had to ask the others for a word or two, but other than that, perfect!
Sally sees the NGOs in Macedonia (MK) as an intermediary between the government and society. Akcija Zdruzenska is more of a lobbying organization than direct services organization. They like to support local women’s organizations and try to bring their voices to a national level.
Their main problem is with access to information and the cooperation between NGOs and local governments. Sally claims that the government (and by this, she usually means the national government) is only open for cooperation on certain projects that they initiate. Then, the projects become a way of perceiving the achievement of the government (and thus the party) rather than the individual NGOs or the cooperation between the two. Sally claims that after the project is over, the government will forget about the NGO.
Akcija Zdruzenska wants to monitor the implementation and development of policies that try to identify the gaps between the legal situation and the actual situation. The government is not happy, Sally claims, with their NGO due to the critical nature of their work. Yet, still Akcija Zdruzenska works towards standardizing cooperation with the government, on paper at least. But in practice, the standardization has a long way to go. A few of the questions that must be answered are Who represents civil society to the government or the public? How can the NGOs network or cooperate? Which platforms do they all support?
The government would work with an organization for a few years to provide advice or services. Sometimes the government would even provide funding to these (other) organizations, then elections would come and they would switch to a different organization, often times created specifically for this purpose, that would promote the parties ideals with no hesitation if the original organization would not support their campaign.
Speaking of elections and the government, “neither the issue of gender equality or women’s rights are not treated the way they should be treated in these platforms.” They have tried to create issue based platforms but the problem, in their eyes, is that many of the other NGOs that believe in the same thing they do are not very well developed. Their problems in creating a group of women’s NGOs has lead to an even further “lack of solidarity between women’s groups” which is problematic since they all compete for funding from very limited sources.
Sally said that the European Union has been pushing for an mechanism of formal cooperation between NGOs/civil society and the government, but it only recently ended with a Code of Conduct. That was for the National government, but it is different with the local government because they are more independent.
We then switched gears (and this interview took place when I was still searching for just women’s groups to work with, so some of the questions are along that line, like the ones that follow) to discuss women’s rights in Macedonia. Sally claims that women’s rights is not high on the agenda for the current government, that it is present in the discussion at all because someone is asking about it. Women rights groups receive almost no funding from the government, the only funding comes from international donors. On paper there is a law against sex or gender discrimination, but not in practice since there is no monitoring of their . There is a “huge gap between promises and expectation.”
Sally believes that the government discounts women’s NGOs as lacking the ability to actually implement changes. Even though on paper, the women’s groups across the country have a large list of supporters, the government only reaches out to them at election time. Further, the governments believes that the women’s NGOs are not even relevant to the discussion since they lack knowledge about the ‘real world.’ The first women’s NGOs were not feminist in nature and could not even be called a movement, according to Sally. In the beginning, women’s NGOs were the largest in number, but their limited success (legally) was due to a lack of specifically requested rights. Sally even claims that some NGOs ended up in or with the structures they were working against (a hierarchy of sorts).
On top of all of difficulty outlined above, it is even more difficult to mobilize around a specific issue. An example they provided was abortion a few years ago. Different organizations tried to go to the streets to collect signatures, but it was hard to mobilize people for public speaking or even standing together. When pressed for why it was so difficult, they theorized that people were not ready to be publicly challenging the government. As well as the relative ease of being linked to the opposition of the current party in power. The government (read party, for this discussion) also began funding specific NGOs that no one had heard of before that specifically supported the government side of the issue, no other ones were funded. In fact, this is a problem that they saw in the NGo sector: NGOs that pop up around elections to support a specific cause and then disappear immediately after it.
With a specific focus on the national government/party in power, they believe that the government is pro-life/pro-family. The government has begun to roll back many of the success that the women’s rights movement had made in the past few years, or rather these success stories are being seen as being “taken away” by the legislature and are now seen as “highly problematic.” It is forbidden to mention sexual orientation and gender in the legal government. However, the current party in power, VMRO, has added religious eduction in school even though MK is supposed to be a secular country, Sally alleged.
In a policy to increase the birth rate and population of MK, the government has started to reward parents for having a 4th or 5th child.They will receive ⅔ of their expenses, which is higher than most salaries. It was meant to only be for the areas were birthrate is low (AKA ethnic Macedonians only), but the constitutional court ruled that this was unconstitutional. Now the government only give extra money for the 3rd child only for 18 years, and it is 70% of the average salary. In addition, if the woman has never worked outside of the home, but raised 3 or 4 kids when she reaches 62 she is entitled to a full pension. Sally called this “crazy!” [Meaning I think, the idea that she would get a full pension if she works only as a mother and that if you do not have children that you are NOT entitled to a pension.]
Sally says that the new government is trying to keep a low profile but traditional values and the role of the family is emphasized to the detriment of transgendered individuals. The government is creating a hostile environment, Sally charges.
There have been numerous challenges to the different laws in MK, meaning that the government is trying to change the law that is on the book, rather than from the public against a law. Such as the attempt to define marriage (as between a man and a woman), while there is a definition of this in the Family Law section, the government wanted it in the Constitution.
There is a gap between men and women’s rights. At least in the implementation, as well as in the law. Sally suggested that this could be a hold over from the Socialist past where people were declared equal (even when they were not). She also claimed that many women did not know that they were not equal. Many people perceive that men and women are currently equal. In addition, there are other issues that are considered more important- such as ethnic minorities- before women’s rights are considered.
Yet, Sally and the others wanted to point out that there are connections between the different forms of discrimination and that if the political discourse was open about one form (ethnicity) it should also apply to the other forms (sex, gender, etc). Since marginalized groups are not considered important to women’s issues, it is even harder to get women’s rights on the political agenda.
Sally suggested...
- that networks of women’s organizations be formed to facilitate discussion and interaction to better serve the women of MK.
- organizations should help the government formulate laws, but not produce them with in the NGO because they do not have the jobs or resources
- organizations should demand that the government do it’s own job and develop policy (currently she believes this is done outside of the government by many organizations who produce the laws and then give it to the government members, who present it to parliament.)
-there should be more cooperation with collecting the public opinion to write legislation.
Since they view themselves as a ‘watch dog style’ organization, it is very hard to fund raise and requires institutional funding (which they d not have). Institutional funding would give Akcija flexibility in the business affairs to do their job properly.
Also, Sally believes that the government (especially the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy) believe that that they have an “open door policy” and that is enough forms of cooperation. That organizations should come to them, rather that the Ministry going to different organizations. Sally believes that the government needs to be proactive in consultations where exist. That the government invites a few different NGOs for a few hours and then say they have consulted with the NGO sector.
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