USAID ESP provides ongoing support in coordinating efforts to promote gender initiatives at the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine. The logical continuation of the comprehensive training of staff members, which lasted for five months, was the establishment of a Ministry advisory body – the Gender Committee on Ensuring Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men, Prevention and Combating Discrimination.
On March 4, 2024, the first meeting of the Gender Committee was held. Members of this Committee are representatives of the Ministry’s structural units, USAID ESP gender expert Yulia Galustian, and representatives of NGO Poruch. The Gender Committee Chairman is Yaroslav Demchenkov, Deputy Minister of Energy of Ukraine for European Integration. It is planned to renew the composition of the Gender Committee to include representatives of fuel and energy sector (FES) companies, employers, sectoral trade unions, NGOs, and international partners.
The Gender Committee aims to develop proposals and recommendations to the management of the Ministry and FES enterprises to create working conditions that would allow women and men to carry out their labor activities based on the principles of gender equality and inclusion, combined with the development of appropriate infrastructure and the creation of barrier-free space, as well as to provide women and men with the opportunity to combine work with family responsibilities and to create safe working conditions for life and health.
The members of the Gender Committee reviewed the results of a pilot study conducted by NGO Poruch on the new current needs and problems of women and men working in the energy sector, the concept of the Women’s Leadership Program being developed by the Ministry, and discussed the calendar plan for the current year.
Given the need to continuously strengthen the institutional capacity of the Ministry in terms of energy sector recovery, taking into account the principles of gender equality, a series of training events for the staff is planned. The training will begin already in a week.