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The material posted here was provided to the Division for the 
Advancement of Women by the Government in response to a note 
verbale. It is being made available in electronic format in
the form received. In cases where it was not possible at this 
time to reproduce charts and tables supplied, these can be 
obtained by contacting the Division for the Advancement of 
Women directly.
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                        POLAND

OFFICE OF THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS
Government's Plenipotentiary for Family and Women
Ms. Jolanta Banach


INFORMATION
on the Implementation in Poland of the Directives included
in the Final Documents of the 1995
Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women:
the Beijing Declaration - Platform for Action 2000

I. The essence and objectives of Poland's National Action
Program for Women until the year 2000

     Poland's National Action Program for Women is a response
to the needs of, and barriers to, full equality of women and
men, as diagnosed in the "Report for the Fourth United Nations
World Conference on Women - Beijing 1995 Those needs and
barriers hinder women in full enjoyment of their rights and
active participation in all areas of public life The Action
Program also is a result of a voluntary obligation taken up by
the Polish Government to implement the directives included in
the Conference's final document, i.e the "Platform for Action"
and the "Beijing Declaration" The Government expressed this
readiness by adopting the directives in September 1995 (without
any reservations or deletions).

     At the same time, the Action Program is an attempt to
translate the directives contained in the Beijing Declaration
and Platform for Action into desired changes in selected
priority areas of public life. The changes should be geared
towards facilitating the proper understanding of women's
rights, creation of conditions necessary for making their
opportunities equal to those of men, treating women on a par
with men and, as a result, improvement of women's status
Furthermore, and in the line of the Platform's message, the
Action Program is an instrument envisaged to accelerate the
implementation of objectives defined by the international
community ten years ago in the United Nations document
"Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women until
2000" (Nairobi, Kenya, 985)

     Alike all the ,"Platform for Action" directives, the
Program is guided by the idea of understanding and promoting
women's rights as integral human rights, as well as the
necessity to eliminate unwarranted, often narrow and
stereotypical perception of those rights From the point of view
of its substance, the Program is based on the above mentioned
documents, as well as the Council of Minister's declaration of
its political will to introduce vital changes deemed necessary
to improve the position of women and raise their status in our
country. This declaration was made in fall 1995 in a document
called "Recommendations for the Action Program for Women."
     The strategic objectives defined in the Program, the
nature of necessary improvement or remedy measures, as well as
the specific list of tasks assigned to specific agents, are all
orientated towards the implementation of objectives presented
in the Platform for Action document, and also well fitted into
the context of political and economic transformations under way
in Poland. They are a response to demands for more effective
measures to be taken for the benefit of women and to the
proposals put forth by women's groups and organizations to the
Parliament, the Government and the Government's Plenipotentiary
for Family and Women.

     The fundamental and paramount long term strategic
objective of the "Action Program for Women" is to promote and
protect women's rights in the context of human rights, respect
for the equality of the sexes and non discrimination in the law
and practice of all the areas of public life. This objective
has been translated into the following categories of tasks:

- to expand the knowledge about women's role in the society and
their situation, about the legal regulations and safeguards of
equal opportunities for women; to raise the awareness of the
existence, and the necessity to eliminate, gender-based
stereotypes and the corresponding division of social and public
roles, to promote proper understanding of what equal
opportunities for women and men mean and how important it is to
observe this principle in a democratic state of law, to expand
the knowledge of women fighting for their rights,

- to develop the society's proper approach to women, to make
people and institutions sensitive to manifestations of
gender-based discrimination and to promote an idea of achieving
equal opportunities which is not founded on confrontation, to
make the society aware of the necessity to respect equal rights
and to divide - on a par basis - the duties arising from
combining job and family, to show how women may defend
themselves against violation of their rights,

- to develop specific positive social behavior, i.e. full
observance of women's rights, taking measures to let the idea
of equal opportunities fully materialize, to eliminate social
gender-based stereotypes and prejudice,

- to work out research strategies and a system for collecting
gender-disaggregated data on the position of women in all areas
of life.

II. The structure and topics covered by the Action Program for
Women

     The Program specifies ten topical areas corresponding to
various spheres of women's life in the society, which have been
considered as ranking the worst from the point of view of
occurring deficiencies and violations of women's rights.
D WOMEN AND THE ECONOMY

1. The problem of gender-base segmentation of the labor market,
occupational segregation and discrimination against women in
employment decisions,

3. Economic activity of women;

The labor market, with particular emphasis on women's
unemployment;

4. Conditions of women's work

5. Alternative forms of employment;

6. Services supporting the reconciling of the professional and
family roles;

7. Poverty and feminization of poverty;

     7.1. Various aspects of the feminization of unemployment
and poverty in rural areas and agriculture.

8. The economic status of rural women and their problems.

E. WOMEN'S HEALTH

1. Health care for women in all stages of their life-cycles;

2. Availability of specialist and women-friendly medical
services and aid. with particular emphasis of the needs of
women living in rural areas:

3. Health education and promotion of healthy lifestyles;

4. Remedy measures and investing in women's health;

5. Reproductive health;

6. Economic aspects of proper medical care for women.

F. WOMEN AND THE ENVIRONMENT

1. Improvement of the quality and safety of women's life
environment;

     1.1. Establishment and support for national and regional
mechanisms of assessing the impact of the natural environment
development and environmental policies on women;

2. Women as participants of the decision making process
concerning the environment and natural resources management;

3. Inclusion of gender-related topics into actions and programs
aimed at sustainable development and ecologically-minded market
economy.

G. VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

1. Eliminating and counteracting violence against women within
and outside the home;

     1.1 . Features of violence against women living in rural
areas and the disintegration of the rural family:

2. Adaptation and improvement of existing legal norms and
procedures, in line with the scale and specific aspects of
assistance offered to women,

3. Trafficking in women and prostitution;

4. Developing the awareness of relevant institutions and
persons as to the scope of their legal duties and proper
procedures for rendering assistance to victims of violence;

5. Developing, through education, the society's sensitivity to
any manifestations of violence and the readiness to counteract
them

H. RESEARCH STRATEGIES AND SYSTEMS FOR COLLECTING
GENDER-DISAGGREGATED DATA FOR THE PURPOSE OF ASSESSING,
PLANNING AND PUBLICIZING INFORMATION ABOUT THE POSITION OF
WOMEN IN ALL AREAS OF LIFE

I. WOMEN AND THE MEDIA

1. Adherence to the principle of the equality of the sexes,

2. Access of women, and the organizations they represent, to
the media in order to publicize the views of women's
communities and their own,

3. Picturing women in stereotype-free manner, incorporating the
idea of their equal participation in public life and the
partnership of social and public roles;

4. Procedures of implementing the ban on gender-based
discrimination and promoting stereotypical perceptions of
women's and men's roles by the media, in the area of
information and programming, and of the ban on financing
programs promoting or reproducing views infringing upon the
equal status of women and men from public money.

J. THE MECHANISMS OF COOPERATION BETWEEN THE STATE
ADMINISTRATION AND NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS PROMOTING THE
CAUSE OF WOMEN, AS WELL AS OF SUPPORTING LOCAL INITIATIVES
GEARED TOWARDS THE IMPROVEMENT IN WOMEN' S SITUATION

     The selection of topical areas to be covered by the
Program has been determined by both the areas of life named as
critical for women by the United Nations "Platform for Action",
and women's needs as diagnosed in the 1995 Report for the
Beijing Conference and seen in the context of Polish
circumstances. It is due to the realization of how much can be
achieved, that the Program areas do not exhaustively cover all
the needs of women and the expectations the society holds in
this respect. The selection process was guided by the endeavors
to define actions and tasks of priority, that should bring
about positive social changes on a scale wider than exclusively
the local or community levels. At the same time the Program
defines a limited number of tasks apparently narrower in scope,
yet considered important for eliminating the harmful
gender-based stereotypes developed in the course of social
practice.

     For each topical area of the Program strategic goals have
been defined, whose achievement is to accelerate the
improvement of women's situation from the point of view of
equal rights and opportunities in the society. For each goal,
in turn, a number of oriented actions have been envisaged,
specifying the substantive scope of the proposed changes, as
well as concrete program tasks that should be implemented
within the adopted period (until 2000, and - for some tasks -
beyond) by the state authorities of all levels. It is believed
that this structure of the Program will allow the planned
activities to be clearly outlined, institutions and
organizations responsible for their implementation to be
pointed out, and the implementation of the Program to be
efficiently monitored.

     The topics under the "Women's Rights" area heading, which
has been assigned the biggest importance both in the "Platform
for Actions" and the Program itself, have undergone a
particularly careful selection. After consideration it was
decided that under Polish circumstances the area should cover
only necessary actions orientated towards general legislative
solutions. The experts concluded that more specific issues,
i.e. concrete legislative proposals and demands for changes in
the legal practice, would be handled better and more
efficiently under the headings of particular topic areas.

     The noteworthy feature of the list of the Program topic
areas presented above is that it includes two areas pertaining
to issues yet not referenced in` similar projects, i.e. the
mechanism for cooperation between the state administration and
non-governmental organizations, and research strategies that
can provide an objective assessment of women's situation in
Poland and offer specific indices to serve as points of
orientation in changing the direction and improving the
country's social policy towards women.

     The recognition of non-governmental organizations as an
important social partner in solving women's problems is vital,
because without the development and active participation of
such organizations in joint work with public institutions one
cannot create a modern democratic society or achieve the
planned developmental objectives. The cooperation between
government institutions and local or regional chapters of
non-governmental organizations, as well as the cooperation
between central institutions and the representatives of
associations, unions and federations of non-governmental
organizations, emerge as a new and crucial factor of political
and economic transformations in Poland.

     The Program offers the possibility to create a groundwork
for the mechanisms of cooperation between government
institutions and non-governmental organizations. This should
then be followed by permanent, but continuously improving forms
of such joint work.

     Given that gender-based criteria and points of reference
are still not commonly used, the current stage of development
of statistical research and information in Poland does not
provide the means for a complete assessment of women's
situation in our society, neither to meet the standards of
international organizations and periodical reporting, nor for
the purpose of internal assessment of the on-going changes and
the development of socio-economic policies in their aspects
relating to women.

III. The Implementation of the National Action Program for
Women

     The National Action Program for Women hinges on a
comprehensive approach to solving women's problems with the
participation of social partners. It comprises various areas of
social and public life as well as of women's activity, and even
though it is generally envisaged for implementation by the
Government and officials of the central and local government
administration, it also incorporates the idea of cooperation
with a very diverse circle of other agents, i.e state
institutions, research institutions, non-governmental
organizations, local self-government, trade unions and the
public media. It is assumed that the implementation of this
nation-wide project will attract numerous social groups and
individuals. The framework of the Program is open-ended,
allowing it to be supplemented with various initiatives put
forward by ministries, regional, local and voluntary
organizations.

     Complete and effective implementation of the Program calls
for many changes in the agendas of those participating in the
process. They will have to enrich their outlook with a
gender-based perspective and make it more prominent in the way
their actions are promoted and coordinated in particular
communities and sectors. The state administration is expected
to create proper conditions and to stimulate and support
actions taken by organizations, citizen groups and individuals
to the benefit of women, improvement of their situation and
achievement of equal status for women and men

These include:

- creation of legal framework for the implementation of
particular tasks under the Program,

- stimulating the development, and financing of scientific
research and other development work which facilitates the
implementation of the Program tasks, monitoring of its progress
and evaluation of results,

- creation of organizational structures, and especially the
framework for the institutional promotion and protection of
women's rights.

     Given its very wide scope, the Program can be implemented
effectively only if specific conditions are ensured, in
particular:

1. The Program's objectives and tasks are promoted among the
society via:
- the mass media,
- information materials targeted at various social groups and
their needs

2. Detailed action programs and activity schedules are
developed for all those implementing the Program

3. Priority status is assigned to scientific research carried
out under programs of research and development institutes and
organizations under all ministries.

4. Adequate resources are secured for implementation of
projects promoting women's rights at the local, regional and
national level

5. The progress of the Program's implementation is monitored
and its results evaluated.

     It is not planned to earmark extra funds for the
implementation of tasks included in the Program. The tasks, as
assigned to particular ministries or institutions, will be
financed from the state budget allocations managed by
respective ministers, provincial governors and the management
of state institutions, and will be performed within the
framework of their legal or statutory duties. It will be
necessary, however, to envisage extra headings for expenditure
necessary for the implementation of the Program tasks and
objectives in the draft budgets of those institutions for the
following years. Attempts should be made to seek funds from
sources other than the state budget.

     The implementation of the Program will be overseen by the
Government's Plenipotentiary for Family and Women. The
institutions and organizations designated to perform particular
tasks shall be accountable for their effective and timely
implementation.

     The effective implementation of the National Action
Program for Women will be further underpinned by the monitoring
and evaluation of results performed for selected strategic
objectives and program tasks which have been considered crucial
for inducing desirable changes. The monitoring will be carried
out by designated research institutions.

     The research results will be presented in the form of
interim reports, on the basis of which the Government's
Plenipotentiary for Family and Women will be able to prepare a
periodical statement of information in 1999, and a summary
report subject to the assessment by the Council of Ministers in
2001.

     It is assumed that the implementation of the National
Action Program for Women will contribute to:

- better implementation of women's rights, conceived of as
integral human rights,

- creation of a democratic society, based on the respect for
equal rights and opportunities for women and men.

- more effective elimination of formal and informal barriers to
women's social advancement, their professional and political
activity, and eradication of stereotypical perceptions of
women's position and roles in public, professional and family
life,

- improving the condition of health of the women's population
and reduction of violence against women,

- more efficient utilization of human potential by means of
including women, on a fully par basis, into social, political
and economic life,

- raising the awareness of the society, including women
themselves, as to what their rights are and how they can defend
themselves against those rights being violated,

- development of effective forms of cooperation between the
state administration and non-governmental organizations working
for the benefit of women,

- updating the educational system, and creation of a system of
research and statistical data
collection in order to systematically observe the changes in
women's situation in the society.

     The Program, developed by the Government's Plenipotentiary
for Family and Women, has been based on the experience and
proposals of a team of experts, distinguished specialists in
the areas covered by the program and focusing on the issue of
the equal status of both sexes. Importantly, at the stage of
the Program's creation and elaboration of tasks, many
ministries and representatives of non-governmental
organizations, i.e. significant social partner, have been
invited to the discussion on its final form.

     Currently we are finalizing the work on the initial
version of the Program and soon it will be submitted for
consideration to government ministries and the Cooperation
Forum of Non-Governmental Organizations and the Government's
Plenipotentiary for Family and Women. In keeping with the
procedure adopted in Poland, the next step will be the
submission of the Program for the consideration and assessment
by the Socio-Political Committee of the Council of Ministers.
Once endorsed by the Committee, the Program will be recommended
for the Council of Ministers' approval. It is expected that the
procedure will be completed before the end of 1996, i.e. within
the time suggested by the United Nations.

     Having been approved, the Program will be implemented and
publicized along with the final documents of the Beijing
Conference, including the "Platform for Action", which is an
indispensable companion to the adequate understanding and
interpretation of the objectives and tasks set by the Program.