Gender-responsible budget of the city of Skopje

The objective of this research is to identify gaps in the gender policies and implementation of gender-sensitive budget of the City of Skopje, and make appropriate recommendations to overcome the gaps.

The survey will give a narrower focus on the economic aspects of these policies. The research will be in three directions: analysis of existing policies and implementation, access to public services and the labor market (kindergartens, schools and health services), gender-sensitive budgeting.

 

Duration: September-November 2016

Donor: Center for Research and Policy Making

 

“Heroes and she-roes”: Knowledge for analysis of and advocacy for equal pay for women and mothers in Macedonia (SHE-ROES)

The objective of this project is to correctly measure gender pay gaps (difference in wages between men and women) and motherhood pay gaps (difference in wages between mothers and childless women) in Macedonia and to advocate solutions for addressing the prevalent pay gaps.
In particular, previous research has demonstrated that Macedonia faces gender and motherhood wage gaps of 12.5% and 8.7%, respectively. However, a large part of females remains outside the labour market and can therefore not be considered when the pay gap is calculated (as their wage is not observed). This makes the above figures incorrect, since it is likely that females who stay outside the labour market are not randomly selected not to work. Hence, one bold challenge is to obtain knowledge for the proper calculation of pay gaps, i.e. econometric (technical) knowledge to address the selectivity bias in the labour market.

The project envisages activities positioned within three pillars:

  1. Professional development thorough capacity building and direct knowledge transfer.
  2. Collaborative research.
  3. Building networks for advocacy, promotion and collaboration beyond the project cycle.

 

Donor: Know-how Exchange Program – Austria through the Central European Initiative

Project partner (know-how provider): The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies

Duration: November 2015 – January 2017

 

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Video – The gender wage gap in Macedonia through the perspectives of 5 women

 

Initial kick-off meeting, Vienna, 21-22 December 2015 – Agenda – Gallery

Training “Econometric methods for survey data”, Vienna, 28-30 January 2016 – Agenda – Gallery

Research stay, Vienna, 31 January – 3 February 2016 – Agenda

Working meeting at the Federal Ministry of Education and Women, Vienna, 1 February 2016 – Gallery

Cartoon competition – Flyer – Call – Gallery & winners

Workshop „Gender and motherhood wage gap: Policies, data and econometric methods“, Skopje, 5 July 2016 – Call – Gallery

Round table “Women in the labor market: Stereotypes and challenges”, Skopje, 6 July 2016 – Invitation and agenda – Press release – Gallery

Research stay, Vienna, 19 – 24 September 2016 – Agenda – Gallery

Research seminars attended at wiiw (Gallery):

  • Innovation persistence and firm growth models, Dario Guarashio, University of Rome Sapientsa, 19 September 2016
  • On the future of the European Monetary Union: Targeted reforms instead of greater fiscal integration” Ana Iara, European Commission, 20 September 2016
  • The space for an industrial policy in Europe, Mario Pianta, 22 September 2016
  • Modest recovery in the East – new uncertainty because of Brexit, the economic relations of Austria with the region and the long-term structural changes in the CESEE countries, Mario Holzner, 23 September 2016
  • Connectivity in Central Asia – International workshop, 15-16 December 2016.

Working meeting with a gender expert at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, 22 September 2016 – Gallery

Research stay, Vienna, 14-15 December 2016 – Agenda

Economic forum: „Gender equal wages for higher economic growth“ – Skopje, 30 January 2017 – Аgenda – Gallery – Gender responsible companies

 

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FT Comment No.10 on the the economic aspects of the National Strategy for Gender Equality 2013 – 2020

Info-graph

Advocacy Show-card

Policy brief 15: The gender wage gap is detrimental for economic growth

Upgrade of EdPlaKo-MK

Manual for proper calculation of the gaps

 

 

Visualization of the gender wage gap in Macedonia: Demystifying wages and advocacy for gap minimization

The objective of this project is to raise the awareness for the gender wage discrimination in Macedonia.

In particular, the project builds on an ongoing work, consisting of two pillars: i) calculating the gender wage gap in Macedonia, after workers’ characteristics and selectivity bias have been taken into consideration; and ii) building the EdPlaKo-MK web tool which enables individuals to test their gender-neutral wage and companies to test their wage system against gender discrimination. The main activity of this proposal consists of visualization of the gender wage gap in Macedonia that will be added to the EdPlaKo-MK site, as well through two flyers, so as it gives further information on gender wage gap at the level of sector, occupation, age, experience and education, and further promotes the EdPlaKo-MK tool.

 

Duration: 7 months (2015)

Donor: TTF Open Society Foundations

 

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Web tool EdPlaKo-MK

Flyer 1 – Women’s day gallery

Expert opinion in “Lice v Lice“

Flyer 2 – Distribution through “Economics and Business” monthly

 

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Video – The gender wage gap in Macedonia through the perspectives of 5 women

 

Fostering female self-sustainability through embedding traditional values into alternative touristic attractions in Krushevo

The main objective of the project is to improve self-sustainability of women through development of alternative touristic attractions out of their skills for traditional, homemade and ecological production: embroider linen, knittings, wild berry jams, pasta peeling and grains, natural tea and the like.

Project activities envisage: training of Krushevo women for skills for entrepreneurship, promotion and sales of traditional products, expanding and strengthening the mini-cluster developed within the previous project, developing of three alternative touristic attractions embedding traditional values and promotional campaign involving an event “Days of alternative touristic attractions in Krushevo” and the Fair “It’s homemade, it’s from Krushevo…”. Designed in this way, the project offers an innovative way of combining social entrepreneurship and sustainable tourism, into an individual business model for women’s self-sufficiency.

 

Donor: US Embassy Skopje

Duration: 2015-2016 (10 months)

 

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Call for female participation October 2015 – Call – Application

Workshop for designing alternative touristic attractions, Krushevo, 25-26 December 2015 – Gallery

Piloting of “Botanic tour” and “Aronia grove”, Krushevo, 28 May 2016 – Gallery

Piloting of “Churches from Krushevo and a Vlach house – religion, arts, colors”, Krushevo, 05 June 2016 – Gallery

Brochure: “Krushevo is more beautiful on foot…”

Video: “Krushevo is more beautiful on foot…”

Krushevo woman – Fan page

Tour: Botanic walk, Krushevo, 30 July 2016 – Gallery

Tour: Aronia plantation, Krushevo, 30 July 2016 – Gallery

Fair of traditional, homemade, ecologic products “It’s homemade, it’s from Krushevo…”, Krushevo, 31 July 2016 – Gallery

Tour:”Churches from Krushevo and a Vlach house – religion, arts, colors”, Krushevo, 31 July 2016 – Gallery

 

Does motherhood explain part of the gender wage gap in Macedonia?

The objective of the research is to estimate the contribution of the motherhood wage gap for the gender wage gap in Macedonia after considering workers’ characteristics and selectivity bias onto the labour market, for childbearing-age population.

In particular, we aim to disentangle to which extent the natural role of women to have and raise children potentially affects the gender wage gap. Recent study (Petreski et al. 2014) estimated the adjusted gender wage gap in Macedonia at 5.7%. However, motherhood may still explain some portion of this gap and the preliminary descriptive analyses suggest that it likely biases the gap upwards. This suggests that once motherhood wage gap has been considered, the unexplained adjusted gender wage gap in Macedonia (gender wage discrimination) may be even lower. The literature is abundant in analysing selectivity-corrected gender wage gaps and motherhood wage gaps separately, but merging the two literatures, and estimating these gaps together and at the same time correcting them for selectivity is rare. Hence, we propose a novel methodological approach to tacking this issue. Namely, we will estimate the gaps by employing a repeated imputation technique, which will impute the wages of those who are unemployed or inactive by making assumption on their position with respect to the median wage. Then the imputed samples will be compared to the base sample and the size of the selectivity bias obtained. The fairly standard Heckman estimates will be provided for comparison. Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition will be then applied to the imputed sample to disentangle the explained and unexplained parts of the gender and motherhood wage gaps, giving a figure of the contribution of the latter in the former. Non-parametric alternatives to the decomposition will be pursued as robustness checks. The Survey of Income and Living Conditions (2010) will be used.

 

Provider: CERGE-EI and Global Development Network (RRC-15)

Duration: 1 year (2015)

 

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Presentation at CERGE-EI / GDN Workshop, Prague, August 16-17, 2015

Working paper

 

Empowering women in Krushevo through mini clastering for sales and promotion of traditional products

Тhe objective of the project is to improve the living standards and social inclusion, and to reduce poverty in Krusevo, through association (mini-clustering) of women for production and sale of local, domestic, traditional and ecological, home-made products.
The short-term goals include:

Prompting social inclusion and interaction through association of individual producers, unemployed housewives;
Promoting awareness for investing in their skills to pull out of poverty and improve their lives;
Establishing system for production and promotion of local home-made products, in order to encourage and increase production, sales and promotion;
Strengthening the awareness among policy makers for the need of mini-clustering of individual producers of traditional food, as a tool to promote local economic growth and improve socio-economic conditions.

 

Donor: The Embassy of USA in Skopje

Duration: 2014-2015 (12 months)

 

Call for participants

Application for participation

Training for production, marketing and sales skills – Gallery 1 – Gallery 2 – Gallery 3

New Year Bazaar “Craft Art Fest” Participation – Gallery

Fair “It’s homemade, it’s from Krushevo…” – Gallery

 

EdPlaCo-MK: A tool for greater gender wage equality in Macedonia

The project aims to develop an online tool and raise awareness for greater fairness in pay between men and women in Macedonia.

Short-term goals:

  • To build an online platform EdPlaCo-MK, to which every individual and institution can, based on their characteristics, evaluate its own salary/ies;
  • To popularize EdPlaCo-MK among firms and public institutions in Macedonia, as a “label” whose acquisition will mark them as fair pay employers;
  • To design a manual for using EdPlaCo-MK and to disseminate it to the present and future employees, which would increase its popularity at the individual level;
  • To lobby for embedding licensing in EdPlaCo-MK in government institutions (mainly within the Strategy for gender equality).

 

Donor: United Nations Development Program

Duration: 2014 (6 months)

 

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EdPlaKo-MK web tool

Video – The gender wage gap in Macedonia through the perspectives of 5 women

Analysis of gender wage gap when women are highly inactive: Evidence from repeated imputations with Macedonian data

The objective of this research is to investigate if gender employment gap can shed some light on the gender wage gap and to develop a web-based developmental tool to tackle gender wage inequality in Macedonia.

Macedonian labor market is characterized by relatively large gender employment inequality, coupled with considerable gender pay inequality. These inequalities are magnified at lower education levels. The objective of this research is to investigate if gender employment gap can shed some light on the gender wage gap. In particular, low-to-medium skilled women in Macedonia may be affecting the gender wage gap due to their labor inactivity owing to child-raising, being unpaid family worker, high reservation wage and remittance receiving from the male migrant. We propose to explore this view by estimating selection-corrected and adjusted-for-characteristics gender wage gaps for different skill levels in Macedonia. The empirical approach will recuperate the counterfactual wage distribution that would prevail had the selection into work been fully random. As an innovative approach to this issue, we will use alternative imputation techniques which do not require assumptions on the actual level of missing wages, as typically required in the matching approach, nor they require arbitrary exclusion restrictions raised in two-stage Heckman sample-selection models. At the policy level, the issue gained importance and the government responded with establishing Equal Opportunities Committees both at national and local level, but the problem of gender (wage and employment) discrimination has not been resolved. Our investigation may shed new light on the issue and help in i) devising fuller Strategy for equal employment opportunities; and, more importantly, ii) establishing the EdPlaCo-MK as a web-tool serving as a standard helping employers (public and private) to develop best practice for fair employment and compensation.

 

Provider: Global Development Network and the Government of Japan

Duration: 2013-2015 (two years)

 

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Article in the Journal of Labor Research

Video – The gender wage gap in Macedonia through the perspectives of 5 women