July 2nd, 2015 Vilnius, Lithuania
Venue: ZETA Room, Radisson Blu Hotel Lietuva
Konstitucijos ave. 20, LT-09308, Vilnius, Lithuania
Equal, valuable and effective participation of men and women in the labour market, business, individual activities and decision-making is a necessary prerequisite for achieving equal economic independence and the strategic objectives of EU – economic growth, competitiveness of every woman, every man and the welfare of society.
Only 30 percent of small- medium sized companies have women as their company heads in Lithuania, while the number of women on the boards of stock market listed companies is less than 20 percent. Situation in many other European Union countries is not much better and is improving very slowly.
In order to accelerate the gender balance in economic decision making, EU countries are curently considering the draft Directive of European Parliament and the Council, to propose measures that would be applied on the boards of stock market listed companies to ensure gender balance.
Lithuania is implementing a project called “Closing Gender Gap in Economic Decision – making in Lithuania”, it is financed by the EU’s employment and social solidarity program PROGRESS. The aim of the project is to encourage gender balance on the boards of stock market listed companies. The conference is a part of this project. The participants of the conference are: representatives of the stock market companies; women entrepreneurs, state and municipal authorities, scientists, gender equality experts, non-governmental organizations, social partners. They will discuss the added value, the benefits of women and men balance, the pay off of the investments. All these aspects will be reviewed in more detail in the main report and discussed in the sessions of the conference. Interactive discussions will be held on the measures taken by other countries, success stories, challenges, problems.
The first session will highlight the situation of Lithuanian and Estonian companies boards, the World Bank representative will introduce the measures to promote women’s entrepreneurship.
The second session will cover some of the measures proposed in the draft Directive, interactive discussions will highlight a variety of public policy measures to improve the gender balance.
The third session will introduce the representatives of the Lithuanian and Eastern Partnership countries that will present their success stories, discuss the challenges, problems and the ways to solve them.
Aims of the conference:
- Inform businessmen, stock market listed companies, media and other participants on women’s economic empowerment and the importance, advantages / added value of gender balance in economic decision – making.
- Exchange of success stories.
- Analyze, evaluate and discuss appropriate measures to improve the representation of women in top management and leadership positions, to promote equal participation of women and men in the various levels of management.
