AKIPRESS.COM - Gender mainstreaming the work of local governments and election campaigns was the focus of an OSCE-supported training seminar for some 45 high-level local government executives and local district legislators from Kazakhstan’s Atyrau Region on June 21, the OSCE said.

The participants addressed gender-related challenges in Kazakhstan with a particular focus on the international legal instruments on gender equality and gender-responsive budgets, identifying obstacles affecting the political, economic and social advancement of women and further ways to expand women’s involvement into traditionally male-dominated professions.

They also learned about strategy and communication techniques for running gender-sensitive election campaigns and were briefed on how to apply gender-mainstreaming principles to promote good governance, transparency and accountability in rural communities and small towns.

“One of the objectives of the current reform of the civil service – under the Plan of the Nation and the ‘100 Concrete Steps to Implement Five Institutional Reforms’ – is to form a professional and autonomous state apparatus,” said Elena Tarassenko, Deputy Head of the National Presidential Commission on Women’s Affairs and Family-Demographic Policy. “In this respect, women must be enabled to participate at all levels in all spheres of the socio-political and economic life of the country.”

The seminar was organized by the OSCE Programme Office in Astana in co-operation with the National Commission and the Regional Administration.

The event is the second in a series of three training seminars organized as part of the Office’s long-standing efforts to support the host country in implementing the OSCE Action Plan for the Promotion of Gender Equality.