Presenting Results of the Project “SME Capacity Building for Implementation of Women’s Empowerment Principles”

Presenting Results of the Project “SME Capacity Building for Implementation of Women’s Empowerment Principles”

The Association of Business Women in Serbia, held a closing press conference for the project “SME Capacity building for implementation of Women’s empowerment principles”, which was financially supported by UN WOMEN Project Office in Serbia.

 

Partners on this project were: Association of Business Women “Eve” from Valjevo, Association of Business Women “Nadezda Petrovic” from Cacak, Association of Business Women from Nis, Association of Business Women “Vizija” from Kragujevac and the Academy of female entrepreneurship from Backi Petrovac.

During the ten months of project “SME Capacity building for implementation of Women’s empowerment principles”, it has been achieved that over 200 SME managers are now informed about the Women’s empowerment principles, 51 general manager gave the statement of support to the principles, 30 enterprises has introduced them in their business operations, and project activities were announced in media almost 80 times.

According to Olivera Popovic, the chief coordinator on the project and vice president of the ABW, in Serbian companies many of the principles have already been introduced as standards, and are being applied for many years now. However, this project has enabled to understand the need for women’s empowerment and the need to create and implement new methods, rules, procedures that allow all the more efficient inclusion of women in the labor market.

“The adjustment to the EU standards in business operations, which is yet to come in the following years, involves the empowerment of women for the world of labor, increased balance between professional and private life and, of course, the development of professional careers according to the potentials and tendencies of employed women. This is the field that we have to work on together and work harder. This project enabled the information about gender-equal business to reach a great number of entrepreneurs and many of them supported and implemented the Women’s Empowerment principles in their companies. Slogan of this initiative says: “Equality means business” and the message that it’s trying to convey is that empowered women in companies bring empowerment of companies, more successful business, better profits”, emphasized the vice president of the ABW.