From February of 2021, the Social Justice Center (formerly EMC), with the support of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), is implementing a project titled: "Support the removal of barriers preventing Women's Equal Participation in the Labor Market."

This project will address nation-wide labor market trends that relate to higher unemployment among women and disproportionate concentration of women in the informal sector. In particular, the project will study the factors that lead to this outcome, - barriers at the transitional stage from education to employment, labor market dominated by a demand for low-skilled manual labor, low wages making it impossible to afford childcare. Following the examination of the problem the project will come up with policy interventions that could improve labor outcomes for women regionally and nationwide.

Tkibuli - a coal mining town in Upper Imereti - will provide a case in point for this project, for discussing issues around women’s participation in the labor market, as well as the gendered effects of national economic and labor policy. Socio-economic conditions and the deeply inequitable structure of the labor market in Tkibuli are both representative of inequities nationwide and a special case with a range of context-specific challenges. The region’s continued dependence on an extractive industry that fails to produce safe, well-paying jobs and creates a state of permanent social, economic and ecological crisis has dire consequences for local women.

Based on the researche findings and recommendations developed in the initial stage of the project life span on national labor outcomes and the case of Tkibuli, the project team will embark on a multi-pronged awareness raising effort that will aim to remove structural and institutional barriers that produce gender inequities on the Georgian labor market. The project will include both a coordinated production and dissemination of multimedia products and targeted advocacy among relevant policymakers and stakeholders through meetings, public discussions and presentations of findings. Mentioned effort would aim to raise public awareness of the current gendered structure of the labor market in Georgia and its causes. It would also attempt to highlight and mobilize support for policy interventions, identified under the study envisioned above, that could alleviate and ultimately reduce gendered inequities in the Georgian labor market.  

The primary aim of the project is to uncover and decrease the work place discrimination of women on local and central level, through research, advocacy and awareness raising activities. To achieve the stated goal the project sets out the following objectives:

Objective 1: Promote research-based knowledge and awareness within decision-makers and local residence on social, cultural and institutional barriers that constrain women’s participation in the labor market in Tkibuli.

Objective 2: Identify and alleviate the barriers preventing women from entering the job market on the national level through advocacy efforts;

Objective 3: Raise public awareness about the inequalities and the gender stereotypes around the employment sector that take place on national and local level.

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