The LIS has an important role to play in furthering gender equality, non-discrimination and equal opportunities in the workplace. As the key public institution for the promotion and enforcement of legislation regarding labour relations, social security, and occupational safety and health, the project encouraged the LIS to improve its gender mainstreaming methodology and to adopt proactive problem-solving approaches within its operations.

The project has organized a study visit to the Spanish Labour Inspection for Ukrainian labour inspectors, officers from the Occupational Health and Safety Service and the Ministry of Labour, and the social partners. The good practices reflected in the Spanish law were consequently submitted to the Parliamentary Committee on Social Policy and Labour in view of their current efforts to amend the Ukrainian gender equality law.

The project likewise prepared recommendations on how to better mainstream gender into the LIS. Applying these recommendations to labour inspection in the Ukrainian context, the project helped the LIS develop and publish an outreach campaign to raise awareness on gender issues at the enterprise level. The project also relied on these recommendations to develop a training package for the LIS to foster gender equality in the workplace. The package was implemented in 14 training sessions for 280 labour inspectors in the spring of 2011.

On 26-27 July 2011 the technical seminar for state labour inspectors of Ukraine ‘LIS and OSH strategies to consolidate the achievements of the EU-ILO Gender Equality in the World of Work Project’ was held. The participants thanked the Project for the opportunity to get a new approach for work and planning. The representatives of OSH Inspection admitted that Project made them look at the problem of hazardous working conditions for women and men in a different way – it is important not to restrict women’s involvement in such works but to create safe working conditions for everybody.

All participants highly estimated knowledge and experience gained during the training sessions within the framework of the Project and thanked for very useful training materials adopted for Ukraine. They thanked the Project for the opportunity to study international regulation on gender equality issues, best practices and methodology of gender equality plans.

Mr. Oleksandr Semko, Deputy-Director of the OSH Inspection’s Training Centre,  presented the activities of Training Centre, which involved inspectors in training sessions once every three years on the basis of combination of sectoral education with training for public service. Gender quality issues were included into agenda of training sessions for labour inspectors. In future, they plan to continue studies on gender.

Mr. Joaquim Nunes, Labour Inspection Senior Specialist (ILO/ Budapest) presented the best practices of gender equality promotion and enforcement by Labour Inspection. He reminded to the participants the main ILO Declarations aimed to eliminate discrimination at work, main international labour standards on equality and discrimination.

Together with the international ILO expert the participants discussed what the Labour Inspection Services can do to consolidate the achievements made within the EU-ILO Gender Equality in the World of Work project. LIS should continue work on external and internal factors, namely:

• external factors: legislation improvement, awareness raising, including awareness of all social partners;
• internal factors: implementation of new methods of management and inspection procedures, including new planning tools, adapting best international methods to Ukrainian reality, making special working group that would study gender issues and become experts regarding gender.

Modification of the legislation should be a priority as it is very hard for labour inspectorate to be effective without friendly legislative environment.

See also the presentation by international expert:

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