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First IAFFE-Europe conference!
IAFFE-Europe conference, 21-22 January 2005, Budapest.
"Central and Eastern Europe: A feminist economic dialogue on transition and EU-enlargement"
Report by Edith Kuiper, Ailsa McKay, Katalin Koncz and Barbara Hopkins
From 21-22 January 2005 the first IAFFE-Europe conference was held. This international conference on ‘Central and Eastern Europe: A feminist economic dialogue on transition and EU-Enlargement’ took place in Budapest, Hungary. The conference was hosted by the Corvinus University of Budapest and the Women’s Studies Center of Prof. Katalin Koncz. The IAFFE-Europe conference committee consisted of Barbara Hopkins, Katalin Koncz, Edith Kuiper and Ailsa McKay.
The conference was a great success: 70 participants from 18 countries attended the conference, coming from Eastern Europe (e.g. Hungary, Poland, Russia, Romania, and Serbia), Western Europe (e.g. Austria, Germany, UK, the Netherlands, and Italy) and from the USA.
After words of welcome of the Rector of the Corvinus University, the local organizer
Katalin Koncz, and Edith Kuiper from IAFFE-Europe opened the conference. Ms. Petra Ulshoefer, Director of ILO Regional Office for the CEE gave a plenary presentation on “Gender equality and decent work in Central and Eastern Europe”.
An important focus of the conference was gender sensitive budgeting. Prof. Dr. Diane Elson gave a plenary talk on “Gender sensitive budgets in the EU” the second day of the conference, and there were various sessions on this topic on the program.
One of these sessions, sponsored by UNIFEM, involved formal presentations from Marjana Dokmanovic (Serbia), Tatjana Kuzmanovic (Serbia), and Zofia Lapiewska (Poland). Prof. Charita Jashi, from the university of Tiblisi (Georgia) and Diane Elson acted as discussants for this session and, with reference to moving the projects forward, the participants benefited from their expert advice. Another session covered ongoing initiatives in Scotland and Georgia and introduced a related project focusing on developing an economic literacy programme for those involved in promoting the concept of gender sensitive budgeting. The discussion following both sessions was lively and informative, highlighting the diverse range of work going on throughout the region. This was further evidenced in a roundtable discussion exploring the rationale for a European Gender Budget Network. A wide range of countries and sectors were represented in this discussion and the general agreement was in favor of setting up such a network. An initial organizing committee involving Ailsa McKay (Scotland), Edith Kuiper (Netherlands), Catharina Schmitz (Nordic Council), Elizabeth Villagomez (Spain) and Diane Elson (UK) agreed to work together in taking this project forward. In the meantime Zofia Lapiewska of the Network of East West Women (NEWW) invited those in attendance to join NEWW’s Gender Budget Project e-mail list, which provides regular updates of initiative around the globe. She encouraged everyone to send in any relevant information to her and advised that she would pass it on via the email list. True to her word, within a day of the conference close we all received an email from Zofia welcoming us to the list. The level of interest and discussion at the conference around the concept of gender sensitive budgeting indicated the positive relationship between feminist economics and feminist economists in moving this important area of work forward. IAFFE and IAFFE-Europe clearly have a role to play in supporting this initiative and hopefully this will be realized in part through the proposed network.
In other sessions, topics were addressed such as the gender implications of tax and pension reforms, and the flexibilization of the labor market, women’s entrepreneurs in transition economies, the role and extent of the informal economy in various Central and Eastern European countries, the position of women in specific industries (tourism, banking, etc.), the feminization of poverty in transition countries, and the combination of work and care in both transition economies and Western Europe.
The closing session addressed the current discussion in the Hungarian women’s movement and how feminist economic research could play a role in supporting these discussions and lobbying activities. Currently the Hungarian women’s organizations lack the necessary funds basic for their organization and there is not much contact between the various groups. In this context, the conference contributed by stimulating these discussions and contacts, and one of the results of this meeting was that the representatives of the largest left wing and right wing umbrella organizations here represented decided to cooperate in developing strategies for the empowerment of women, and a Hungarian Network for feminist economics was founded (Katalin Koncz, President) and announced at the conference.
IAFFE-Europe launched an initiative to support membership in Central and Eastern Europe and to enable libraries and individuals from this region to obtain the journal Feminist Economics and books on feminist economic topics for (very) reduced costs. This will also be publicized on the iaffe-europe website (www.iaffe-europe.org). If you are interested, please email info@iaffe-europe.org.
There was plenty of opportunity for the conference participants to meet over dinner (the Hungarians do know how to eat and eat well!), at the poster session, during the conference tour after the conference and at individual trips into the city of Budapest, and of course to the thermal baths in hotel Gellért. An issue that came up during these discussions was when and where the next IAFFE-Europe is going to take place….Tiblisi, Moscow, Istanbul, Warshaw, Florence?
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