Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development, arranges a National Conference to Launch the National Campaigns to achieve gender equality in the Economic Sector

Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development- PWWSD, held in Ramallah and Gaza Strip in parallel a conference to launch the national campaigns to achieve gender equality, especially in the economic sector, on Tuesday 07/03/2023. The conference was attended by representatives of CSOs, women CBOs, trade unions/ syndicates, ministries, local governance bodies, and representatives of organizations involved in advocating the rights of women with disability.

Maali Barqawi, representative of PWWSD, said during the opening session: “this conference is a result to the collective work of various organizations working under the project: “gender equality in the economic sphere: our right our priority”, as these organizations aim at enhancing and protecting the economic rights of Palestinian women within a very complicated situation and the presence of a big number of challenges that women face”.

Engineer Ahlam Abdul- Malik, a member of the national coalition “My Right” to advocate and enhance women’s economic rights and their right to decent work, said: “although laws and national regulations address gender equality, the Palestinian Labor Law is still unable to change the status of women in the work environment”. She added: “women’s participation in the labor force is among the lowest percentages on the global level though women represent 49% of the total population in Palestine. Unemployment rate among women reached 41.2% compared to 21.3% among men. In the Gaza Strip, according to the reports issued by the UN agencies, the percentage of unemployment among women reaches 63.7%”.

During the conference, a film about the project and success stories of women who broke the traditional norms and involved in untraditional works, was screened, and a number of work papers were discussed. Ms. Rinad Msaeed, a member of the national coalition “My Right”, presented a work paper about violations faced by working women, the issues related to the implementation of the minimum wages law in the West Bank, and the possibility to apply the new minimum wage in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. During her speech Rinad recommended the necessity to endorse law amendments to ensure the respect of the economic rights for all workers, mainly women workers. From his side, Adv. Ali Al-Jirjawi, the legal advisor at DWRC, discussed with participants the national campaigns that will take place including the minimum wage campaign, and the campaign related to amendments of the labor law.

This conference is part of the project “Gender Equality in the Economic Field: Our Right and Our Priority”, that the Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development implements in partnership with the Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center, COSPE and EducAid, and funded by the European Union.