Why Gender Equality? > More on Romanian Gender Equality Issues

MORE ON ROMANIAN GENDER EQUALITY ISSUES

• According to statistics gathered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2000, Romania has the highest rate of prostitution in Europe.

• The explicit use of women as sex objects is a widely used marketing and advertising method. Displaying pornographic materials in public is technically illegal in Romania but that law is rarely, if ever, enforced.

• Experts estimate that nearly 2,000 women are trafficked from Romania annually. Women as young as 12 have been saved from brothels and returned to Romania but counseling, job training, and relocation programs for them are rudimentary at best. Despite legislation requiring safe houses in all 30 counties of Romania by the end of 2003, the number of functioning shelters can be counted on one hand.

• A report done in 1999 by Johns Hopkins University, in cooperation with the Red Cross and USAID, found that Romanians are the most abusive husbands in Eastern Europe. The percentage of women who have admitted to being physically assaulted by their husbands are 5 percent in Georgia, 14 percent in the Republic of Moldova, 21 percent in the Ukraine, 22 percent in Russia, and 29 percent in Romania. Fifty-percent of Romanian women say they have been verbally abused by their spouses and 7 percent have been raped.

• A 2003 study coordinated by the Partnership for Equality Center and funded by the Open Society Institute found that some 800,000 women in Romania (of a total population of about 22 million) suffered mental or physical abuse in their homes this year, with the vast majority of cases going unreported. The study also showed that about half a million Romanian children witnessed abuse in their homes. More than 80 percent of the victims interviewed didn’t report the crimes because of shame, fear, and a belief that the authorities would not protect them. Furthermore, 45 percent of victims did not know that domestic violence is illegal.

• The police statistics for incidents of rape in Sibiu County in the 2000-2001 fiscal year are 25 in a county of 444,000 (of which we assume that roughly 60 percent are women). However, in an anonymous, confidential survey conducted by ARAPAMESU (a Romanian non-profit organization) among 632 female students in five Sibiu high schools as part of a violence-against-women awareness campaign in February 2002, 25 reported attempted rape, 9 reported rape, and 6 reported incest. Twelve percent of the young women reported being beaten by their boyfriends and 76 percent of the young women said that they regularly experienced sexual insults, perverted jokes, and obscene gestures and language from their own peers.

• Emil Teodor Popescu of Romania’s Christian Democratic Party . . . once publicly declared incest preferable to homosexuality because “at least incest preserved the chance to procreate.”

• It is commonly accepted among young Romanians that only homosexuals contract sexual transmitted diseases, and most young women believe it is ultimately the prerogative of their partner to wear a condom. A survey done in 1996 showed that only 6 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 24 with stable partnerships used condoms, 8 percent used the pill, and 6 percent used other means of contraception. A survey of adolescents in 1998 showed that more than one-third of teenagers did not use any sort of contraception in their most recent sexual encounters.

• National labor statistics show that Romanian women are working preponderantly in agriculture, manufacturing, trade, health, and education. In these occupations, salaries are about one-third less than the average salary level in the economy as a whole. Overall, employed women make about 20 percent less than employed men.

• Women’s participation in leadership of media agencies averages 12 percent on both the national and local levels.

• According to Corneliu Gavaliugov, the president of the National Agency for Family Protection, in 2005 the number of deaths attributed to family violence doubled from the previous year. Last year 169 deaths were attributed to violence in the home, up from 84 in 2004, the Romanian newspaper "Adevarul" reported on May 20, 2006.

For additional information on gender equality and women’s rights in Romania see:
Gender Equality and Empowerment 10 Years After Beijing - Where do we Stand?
2005 Country Report on Human Rights in Romania

American-Romanian Partnership for Gender Equality
P.O. Box 34374, Washington DC 20043