How We Spread the Word

This presentation compares indicators of women's status in 1994–1995 with the current situation in Lithuania. It draws on Lithuania's 1995 national report on the status of women prepared for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. The analysis highlights progress achieved in politics, science, and other fields. It also compares the main challenges faced by Lithuanian women at that time with those of today.

Closing gender gaps in care is a key policy priority for the EU and central to its commitment to advancing gender equality. Drawing on the latest findings from the EU Gender Equality Index, the presentation will examine inequalities in caregiving responsibilities, their impact on work-life balance, and the broader socioeconomic consequences for individuals, families, and society.

Lithuania's gender equality policy has a strong normative and legal foundation de jure, with significant attention given to the implementation of international gender equality standards. These standards include gender mainstreaming across all policy areas as a horizontal principle, the prevention of discrimination, and the reduction of gender-based violence.

However, in practice, there remains a gap between the normative and implementation levels, which prevents a consistent transition from formal equality to real, or substantive, equality. Despite the existing institutional infrastructure — including the Ministry of Social Security and Labour, the Office of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson, the Women's Parliamentary Group of the Seimas, non-governmental organisations, and a certain level of commitment from the business sector — the implementation of gender equality policy in Lithuania continues to face typical limitations. These include fragmented coordination, limited financial and human resources, and weak dissemination of gender equality policy at the regional level. In other words, Lithuania faces a strategic challenge: limited resources, fragmented action, and weak policy implementation in the regions.

Gender equality policy in Lithuania is developing against the background of a conflicting public discourse. Its implementation faces challenges due to the dominance of traditional family norms; the burden of unpaid care work, which largely falls on women; increasingly visible anti-feminist attitudes in public discourse; a very limited understanding of gender equality; a declining number of women's NGOs; and the slowly growing awareness of young people and the academic community. At the same time, activities aimed at combating domestic violence are becoming stronger.

Despite progress in legal regulation, Lithuanian society still faces structural barriers that cannot be changed by legislation alone. In the context of the demographic crisis and the strengthening of family policy, one of the strongest areas of tension in the implementation of gender equality policy is unpaid care work. A traditional division of roles still prevails, with the majority of household duties and care for family members falling on women. This limits women's opportunities to fully realise themselves in their professional lives and careers, despite their high level of education.

The presentation discusses the difficulties identified during the research that are experienced by women who combine family and work responsibilities while providing care for children, persons with disabilities, or family members who require care due to illness and/or old age.

The presentation will be based on the measurement of the gender pay gap in selected public and private organisations. It will disclose explained and non-justified (discriminatory) pay differences, whether the pay gap is bigger in public or private organisations, and whether the pay gap depends on who leads the organisation: a woman or a man.