Equality actions in local governments improve the public services for women

UN Women, the Union of Municipalities of Turkey and Ankara Metropolitan Municipality organized an Experience Sharing Meeting on Local Equality Actions to enable local governments to share their experience and knowledge on gender responsive efforts at local level.  

The meeting took place with the participation of municipal representatives from Albania, Austria, Sweden as well as Ankara, Bursa, Eskişehir, Gaziantep, and İzmir. They shared their experience and knowledge of gender-responsive services and equality actions that improve the public services for women. The meeting also aimed to enhance the relationship and networking between the local governments.

“Experience Sharing Meeting on Local Equality Actions” took place with the cooperation of UN Women, the Union of Municipalities of Turkey and Ankara Metropolitan Municipality under the scope of “Advancing Gender Equality and Women’s Leadership in Political and Business Life” project which is financially supported by Sweden through Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA),

“Global developments are deepening the inequalities. In this context, the importance of local governments has come to the forefront. Local governments have evolved into organizational structures that play an active role in preventing discrimination and violence against women. I hope this meeting will set an example for every effort taken for women,” said Mustafa Kemal Çokakoğlu, Deputy General Secretary of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality during his opening speech.

“Local governments take important actions in eliminating poverty, ending the inequalities, providing services for disadvantaged groups, and improving women’s rights. Although historically we have the highest level of women’s representation in municipalities, we still need to work hard to increase the representation of women in local governments,” said Assoc. Prof. Birol Ekici, Secretary- General of the Union of Municipalities of Turkey.

“Local governments have a key role in the realization of the global commitments on gender equality. As UN Women, we remain fully committed to supporting local authorities in designing and implementing gender-responsive policies and budgets that improve access, availability, and quality of public services for women,” expressed Asya Varbanova, UN Women Türkiye Country Director

“The Women Lead project aims at promoting women’s leadership at all levels in both the public and the private sector. And it includes the specific aim of strengthening gender sensitive governance in municipalities, where we know that services in all countries often have been defined, designed, and managed under male-dominated terms,” expressed Staffan Herrström, Ambassador of Sweden

Keti Luarasi from Tirana Municipality of Albania, Sara de Blanche from Trollhätan Municipality of Sweden, as well as Michaela Schatz and Ursula Bauer from Vienna Municipality of Austria have participated in the “International Examples of Equality Actions at Local Governments” session.

“National Examples of Equality Actions at Local Governments” session took place with the participation, presentations and speeches by Hülya Daldal Kolayca from Bursa Metropolitan Municipality, Hale Kargın Kaynak from Eskişehir Metropolitan Municipality, Helin Küçük from İzmir Metropolitan Municipality, Kübra Çinkılıç from Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality and Şenay Yılmaz from Ankara Metropolitan Municipality.

“Under the scope of refugee response actions, Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality has multiple women’s centres. In one of these centres, which serves in an area densely populated by refugee women, we are providing advisory, counselling and referral with the cooperation of different UN Agencies,” said Kübra Çinkılıç from Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality.

“Our staff working in the field of women’s empowerment receive trainings regarding gender equality and women’s rights” said Hülya Daldal Kolayca from Bursa Metropolitan Municipality and underlined that these trainings empower staff working with vulnerable groups.

Hale Kargın from Eskişehir Metropolitan Municipality stated that women and men have different needs and that municipal expenditures differ according to those needs. “We definitely need a monitoring module to observe expenditures. A municipal unit needs to track it. The most ideal unit for this is the equality unit of the municipalities”.

Helin Küçük from Izmir Metropolitan Municipality said that it is critical to empower women and especially women who have been subjected to violence and highlighted, “It is important to mainstream gender equality within the municipality.”

Şenay Yılmaz from Ankara Metropolitan Municipality said that this meeting was an efficient platform in terms of experience sharing and said: “We listened to international examples. We know that we need innovative approaches and need to reach more women. We are lucky to be cooperating with UN Women.”