Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, Brankica Janković, has signed the Female Platform for Development of Serbia, which defines development goals in different areas of social life, aimed at focus directing development towards improvement of everyday life quality of women and men in Serbia, over a period 2014-2020.

Commissioner said that she and her colleagues from institution decided to support the Female Platform, symbolically just before International Women’s Day, considering that the issue of gender equality is not only a women’s thing, but the important issue for the development of society.

This platform is good for the development of Serbia, for defining crucial obstacles – imbalanced development of society, especially in rural areas, inadequate human resources and environment management, said the Commissioner.

She added that women are still much more exposed to discrimination than men, as proven by number of claims received by Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, together with data obtained from relevant surveys.

Sanja Nikolin, from the Female Platform, said that this initiative stands out from other such documents because it does not just stand for gender equality, but for a different concept of solving the most important social issues, adding that it is not enough to create programs for female entrepreneurs in various sectors, but we need to give contribution aimed at resolving crucial social problems.

The Female Platform gathers great number of women engaged in public domain, from various institutions, parliaments, academic community, civil organizations, private sector, political parties, syndicates and media.

Participants at the meeting at the premises of the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality were also Ursula Koch, Director of Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Ana Manojlović, Project Coordinator of Foundation.