Prishtina 28/10/2016 – More than a goal, empowerment of women, is a complex process which requires support from all stakeholders and above all, the determination and will of herself. Women should be the key factor in any decision-making process, not based on gender but based on the capacity and professionalism proven over the years, said Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Besa Zogaj-Gashi.

Deputy Minister made these comments at the conference ‘Empowered women: Key to Transformed Societies,’ organized today in Prishtina, by the Democracy for Development (D4D) Institute, part of the Conflict Transformation Program, supported by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and USAID’s mission in Kosovo.

“This year, the Government of the Republic of Kosovo has taken on a special mission to implement the National Strategy for Development for the period 2016-2021. We believe that such a goal can be achieved only by ensuring participation and contribution by all citizens, and especially women,’ said Zogaj-Gashi.

According to her, it’s not an accident that the Government chose to treat the Development Strategy as a priority, and adopted it at the beginning of this year, providing a greater increase of women’s access to property and registration of property in their name.

Deputy Minister also said that many efforts were made to improve the business environment, which was shown in the recent report of the World Bank, and is reflected in the statistics of women business owners, registered in 2015.

“While in 2014, 17% of businesses were women, today women run 24.5% of businesses and there is no reason why this figure shouldn’t be higher in the future,” said Zogaj-Gashi.

The goal of this conference was to present challenges and recommendations as a result of discussions conducted with women from various institutions and organizations, with women of Albanian and Serb communities in Kosovo.