Minister Ahmetaj: Women’s Week in Kosovo 2017

Women’s Week is an event that gathers significant number of women in Kosovo, representatives of different ethnicities, political parties, civil society, business, media and other classes of society in Kosovo.

On this occasion Ministers Ahmetaj in her speech stated that: “Kosovo after so many years of independence has made progress in advancing the position of women in society, both in terms of education, political and public representation. However, legal and administrative measures are not sufficient to advance our position in society. We still have less educated women, employed but who get paid less for the same position in society, we still have selective abortion as a phenomenon amidst us. Therefore, to overcome all these obstacles, above all it is needed education of our society, boys and girls who would emancipate and make the citizens of our country equal with other citizens in the EU. We have already started our journey towards the EU integration, and as such this process will demand a lot of energy, will and hard work. Integration in the EU is a marathon and not a 100-meter race, and we will make sure to get to the finish line of this marathon as quickly as possible. Integration of Kosovo in the EU at the end of the integration process will be an asset, when we take into account its youth, natural resources and opportunities that our country offers. Even the EU that offers equal opportunity, freedom and justice for all, is consistently urging for the advancement of the position of women, as a measure which would promote women’s participation in relevant institutions, hence we can take as example the best EU practices in order to help our society to advance further”.

In the end, Minister Ahmetaj stated “The results achieved so far are encouraging, but even more encouraging would be the goal that we have set to our selves, and that is membership in the EU, which is our objective that we aim to achieve, because EU remains the most advanced democracy, the most powerful economy and mechanism which provides for the Balkans political stability, economic perspective and security”.