At the beginning of this month, a seminar was held within the project "Realization of gender equality between men and women in a local community", conducted by CESI with the support of the city of Zagreb and Embassy of France in Croatia. The implementation of gender mainstreaming policy is according to the Law on Gender Equality the liability of local and regional autonomy units, as well as the education of the same. The Seminar on gender mainstreaming policy was conducted for the male and female employees of Zagreb City Administration, a total number of 21 employees from ten different offices. The subject matters of the seminary were the concept of gender mainstreaming policy, gender analysis as a precondition of its implementation, as well as gender sensitive budget. The question of gender sensitive budget as a tools of gender policy has been recognized as one of the most interesting, and there has been emphasized that it is necessary to define the methodology and tools for the elaboration of such a budget on a national level.

Within the gender analysis discussion the male and female representatives of city offices analyzed the possibilities of gathering various data according to gender/sex, and which would be the basis for gender analysis, i.e. creation of gender mainstreaming policy. Whereas it has been clear at first sight what it means to implement the gender perspective in planning and creating of programmes and measures considering the activities of certain departments of city administration, there was a rather interesting discussion what a gender perspective may mean within civil work engineering, traffic and local utility infrastructure. Does the improvement of public street-lights influence all citizens in the same way? Does the improvement of quality of public transport have more benefits for certain groups of citizens than for the other? 

By the next module, which is scheduled for January, the education participants will try to collect data and relevant information, which may shed a new light upon gender character of measures and programmes which have been implemented in the city of Zagreb.