Working women in the northern Kosovo and Metohija

Abstract

The life of women in northern Kosovo and Metohija is shaped on one hand by the delicate political and safety conditions, and on the other hand by gender relations with predominantly traditional life­style and patriarchal value systems. The research primarily concerns the public sphere of women from rural areas, while gender relations in everyday life could be judged only through indirect indicators such as: women's participation in the ownership structure, the dominant reason for unemployment among women who have never worked being a sacrifice of such opportunities due to housekeeping and child care, the dominance of traditional skills characteristic of the elderly population of the village. In researching the reasons for the increasing depopulation of villages and low fertility, the categories in the field of private life and gender relations grounded in specific life circumstances can not be neglected. However, in this study we were mainly interested in the public sphere of social life of women from rural areas in northern Kosovo and Metohija, the availability of non- agricultural labor market to these women. A dominant feature of the public sphere of life of the women from rural areas of Kosovo and Metohija is a high level of employment in the non-agricultural sector, which entails a high level of health and pension insurance in the respondents of the study. Non-agricultural employment takes place largely in state/socially-owned companies, while employment in the private sector is extremely low, while private enterprise is almost negligible. The reason for this can be found in the high presence of the state institutions of the Republic of Serbia in this territory, the majority of which being displaced from other parts of the province due to the inability to function. However, such a high dependence on the public sector in the political conditions in which these institutions have a temporary character is also a risk factor for the inhabitants of these territories. In case political and economic conditions in future require reorganization, restructuring, privatization and the reduction of the number of employees, it is necessary to carefully develop and implement prevention measures for working women who are at risk of redundancy, since this situation in women from rural areas may lead to their closure in the sphere of everyday life and their transition to the status of unpaid family members in agricultural households. Population belonging to the category of unpaid family members in agricultural households in Serbia registers very poor social living conditions (Babović, Vuković, 2008). Therefore, it is important that women threatened with redundancy, as a precaution, in a timely manner take the appropriate measures in order to better their situation in the labor market and remain employed. In designing these measures, research findings which point to a mismatch in the respondents' skills and knowledge with the needs of the labor market should be taken into account. Moreover, it is significant to work on increasing the social capital of women from rural areas through nurturing the culture of association and organization. Finally, it is necessary to help maintain the authentic cultural activities that will bring amusement to community members and the pleasure of participating in community life.

Keywords

• gender
• work
• women
• Kosovo and Metohija