Panel discussion “Women and Telecommunications”

May 7th, 2001
at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Electrical Engineering

In fulfilling the mandate of the ITU Task Force on Gender Issues to encourage gender awareness in the national telecom sector, Ms. Natasa Gospic, General Manager of GSM – MONET and Chairperson of the ITU Task Force on Gender Issues, initiated this panel discussion in conjunction with the Association for Telecommunication Engineers and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering under the sponsorship of the Federal Ministry of Telecommunications.

The Panel was opened and chaired by Dr Natasa Gospic and Prof. Dr. Branimir Reljin, Professor at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

The Dean of the University, Prof. Dr. Borivoje Lazic, welcomed the participants and introduced the Federal Minister of Telecommunications, Mr. Boris Tadic, who emphasized the role of women in society and indicated that efforts were being made to improve the balance of women and men in this Ministry. The Minister supported the gender-oriented projects and programs and stressed that it should be the men to open the doors for women to be more present in the political life. Women should be encouraged to take all opportunities to be active in the political arena.

Ms. Gospic stressed that gender issues should be a part of the restructuring process taking place in Yugoslavia, especially in the rural areas. Gender perspective should be a part of business policy of the telecom operators. Currently, women hold 29% of the 504 managerial posts in the Government owed telecom operators, generally in the lower professional grades. In research and development, women represent 45%, in information technologies, 49%, and in network operations, 36%. Another important aspect mentioned was how telecommunications can improve women’s lives especially through the new technologies such as telemedicine and tele-education.

Ms. Patricia Faccin, Focal Point for gender issues in the ITU Development Sector, gave a power-point presentation on the objectives and activities of the ITU Task Force on Gender Issues, including the dissemination of an annual gender survey questionnaire and the current on-line discussion where the report of this discussion will be posted.

Several panelists, Dr Vera Markovic, Dr Djordje Paunovic and Dr Vladanka Raspopovic, spoke about women’s role in the University environment; their opportunities and their fears. Although the number of women students enrolled were lower than men, they most often achieved higher grades in their studies than the male students. Main obstacles to women’s involvement were noted as: education received in the family, the ability to fulfill both business and family obligations and the general engineering environment which tends to encourage more men than women to specialize in the engineering field.

Leila Ruzdic, Coordinator of the Women’s Political Network in Yugoslavia and a member of Serbian Parliament, addressed the problem of women’s participation in politics and the impact that women made during the democratic process. She said that today the new information technologies provide opportunities to carry out work much more efficiently than in the past, but that during the democratic process in Serbia, the telecommunication infrastructure was absent and this caused enormous difficulties in the operation of everyday activities.

Divna Vuckovic, Director of Operations for Ericsson in Yugoslavia, presented the success story of Ericsson European Equal Opportunity Award. The Award is a competition between different Ericsson companies in Europe to promote and encourage the workplace that has taken concrete initiative to improve women’s conditions and develop female resources. Ericsson believes that better results have been achieved with more women in the company creating a more constructive corporate culture. Overall goals have been achieved much faster than originally anticipated as employees are rewarded for their skills and competence, not gender.

A Telemedicine presentation by Prof. Branimir Reljin highlighted the impact that the new technologies have on women and family. Positive examples given showed that women are very active in the new technologies, particularly as designers and software producers, but have very little managerial roles in this area.

Some statistics provided by the President of the Association of Telecommunication Engineers, Prof Djordje Paunovic, included the following: 10 of the 40 members on the Executive Committee are women; at the Annual Teleconference, TELFOR, 18% of the speakers were women; in the Engineering Faculty at the University of Belgrade, Dept of Telecommunications, 5 out of 22 professors are women (23%). This year, of the 113 students entering in their final year of studies, 12 are women. Since this faculty was established, 16 Deans have been appointed, all male. During the discussion, several people stressed the need to develop women-oriented telecommunication projects in order to fulfill requirements for women as telecom users.

Conclusion

This panel discussion was the first of its kind sponsored by Yugoslav Telecommunications. Approximately 90 persons attended, nearly an equal number of men and women, including professors, students, telecom operators, government and private telecommunication sector representatives and other interested representatives of network suppliers. It was regretted that the discussion did not attract journalists in spite of the fact that several had been informed.

A recommendation was proposed to prepare a future work program with concrete projects to encourage investors and donors. The report of this discussion will be publicized in several telecommunication journals and newspapers.

Panelists:

Agenda:

1. Dr Natasa Gospic, General Manager of GSM-MONET and Chairperson of the ITU Task Force on Gender Issue
2. Patricia Faccin, Focal point on gender issues in the ITU Development sector and Secretary to the ITU Task Force on Gender Issue
3. Prof. Dr Djordje Paunovic, Telecommunication Association, ETF, Belgrade
4. Prof Dr Branimir Reljin, ETF, Belgrade
5. Divna Vuckovic, Director of Operations, Ericsson Yugoslavia
6. Dr Vladanka Raspopovic, Traffic Engineering Faculty, University of Belgrade
7. Mr. Vera Markovic, Electrical Engineering Faculty, Nis