Civil Service Bureau Continues Progressing towards Gender Equality

In Georgian public service women comprise only 30 per cent of the total workforce and occupy 35 per cent of the 1st rank managerial positions. The gender gap widens even further when considering the gender balance in top managerial positions; across different public entities only 13 per cent of heads and deputy heads are female. Civil Service Bureau (CSB) with UN Women’s support continues its efforts to strengthen gender equality and promote women’s leadership in public service.

On 15 May 2023, CSB and UN Women conducted a joint workshop „Gender Equality in Public Service - Progress and next steps“. The meeting had few key objectives; as the starting point the CSB colleagues were presented with Georgia’s Time Use Survey implemented by the National Statistics Office of Georgia and UN Women. The Survey was completed in the end of 2022, and provides rich data and analysis about the disproprotional unpaid carework burdens shouldered by women in Georgia. As a result of this presentation, the representatives of CSB had an opportunity to further reflect on some of key factors behind the lack of women’s engagement and leadership in public service and discussed policy solutions to strengthen gender responsive employment policies in public service.

As a next agenda item, within the framework of the workshop, the preliminary findings of the Gender Impact Assessment (GIA) of the Law of Georgia on Public service were discussed. The findings emphasize low representation and participation of women in policymaking (specifically, in managerial positions in public service), limited and non gender–sensitive career development, and lack of gender responsive work environment for all female public servants.

And last but not least, the CSB and UN Women jointly reviewed progress against CSB’s internal Gender Equality Strategy and Action Plan adopted by CSB in 2022 and strategized about efforts to strengthen gender equality in public service for 2023-2024.

“It is remarkable that our joint effort together with UN Women, aimed at establishing a gender-responsive public service, have been acknowledged by such important international instruments as CEDAW Committee (Concluding Observations on the sixths periodic report of Georgia). We are very pleased, that today Bureau can already share its progress against CSB’s internal Gender Equality Strategy and Action Plan adopted in 2022 with the support of UN Women”, said Teimuraz Chikhradze, the Head of CSB.

The workshop was carried out within the framework of the “Women’s Increased Leadership for Democracy in Georgia“ (WILD) project funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and “Good Governance for Gender Equality in Georgia” (GG4GEG) project funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway.