On the eve of International Women’s Day, the Karlovo Youth Center, in partnership with the Karlovo Municipality, has organised a Women’s Forum 2025 under the title “Women in Local Government Around the World and in Our Country”.
The forum aimed at women in local government, because with one female minister and only 58 women in Parliament (making up just 24%), there is not much to boast about on the topic of equality in national government.
In local government at the national level, after the last local elections in 2023, only 36 municipalities are governed by female mayors, and 75 are female chairmen of municipal councils in the 265 municipalities in our country.On the other hand, in Karlovo Municipality, almost all directors and heads of departments are women.
The forum was attended by women from the Karlovo Municipal Administration, women from the Sopot Municipal Council, women mayors and girls from the Youth Center.
The Scandinavian countries Finland, Sweden and Norway were given as examples, where women in local and national government are between 40-45%, and women ministers between 48-64%. These are also the countries where women first entered parliament in 1907, a full 30 years before women even had the right to vote in our country. Women entered the Bulgarian parliament for the first time in 1945 with the first woman mayor – Mara Dzhukelova, mayor of Yambol in the period 1945-1949.
The forum is part of the Youth Center’s “Mission Possible” project, aimed at empowering young girls and women, supported by the Bulgarian Fund for Women under their “Birds in BG” project, co-financed by the European Union.
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