NALAS work in the area of gender mainstreaming at local level in South-East Europe was presented at the regional conference “Promoting the values of gender equality: Civil society for social changes”, organised in Skopje, Macedonia, on 28 September 2016.  

Jelena Janevska, NALAS Knowledge and Communications Manager, spoke about the challenges of equality of women and men at local level, promoted the European Charter for Equality of Women and Men in Local Life and presented NALAS strategy to promote gender equality in local government and address gender imbalance.

“It is a striking fact that today only 6,5% of the Mayors in the 12 countries where NALAS operates are women, which is a further decline of the 8,7% in 2011”, said Ms. Janevska. “Still, unlike in 2011, when we had 0 women Mayors in three of the countries, Macedonia, Kosovo and Turkey, today all countries have at least 1 women Mayor”. Ms. Janevska emphasized the important role that NALAS and LGAs have to play in promoting the measures of the Charter and encouraging women participation in local life, and highlighted the good practices of the NALAS member LGAs from Moldova and Serbia in mainstreaming gender issues among their member municipalities.