Ombudsperson for Gender Equality presents her reports for 2015.
From August 2014, when same-sex civil partnerships were introduced, until the end of 2015, 108 such partnership have been concluded in Croatia, 57 between male partners and 51 between female partners, according to data included in the Report of the Ombudsperson for Gender Equality for 2015, reports Jutarnji List on April 7, 2016.
Ombudsperson Višnja Ljubičić warns that, compared to the previous year, there was no progress in protecting the physical integrity of persons of homosexual orientation and in combating against criminal offenses motivated by hate towards this group. According to the Interior Ministry, last year there was not a single criminal proceeding initiated for a crime motivated by hatred towards people of homosexual orientation.
The Ombudsperson in 2015 worked on nearly 2,500 cases, with 486 of them related to the individual protection against discrimination, while the remaining two thousand cases were opened mostly at the initiative of the Ombudsperson herself in order to determine whether laws were being enforced.
The majority of complaints still referred to gender discrimination (90 percent), mostly by women. Ombudsperson warns about the gender gap in wages, since male workers on average earn about 10,400 kunas a year more than women. Croatian labour market remains gender-segregated. In a total of 19 areas of activity, women are extremely or significantly underrepresented in eight of them, mostly in construction, mining, water supply, waste management… Financial and insurance activities, health and social affairs and education are areas in which they are overrepresented.
Last year, there was a slight increase in the number of fathers who used maternity and parental leave. According to the Croatian Institute for Health Insurance, there were 2,200 such fathers or 2.04 percent. “This means that the measures that enable reconciliation of family and professional responsibilities and work and family life are still not being implemented”, said the Ombudsperson.
