Women in Bulgaria

Women in Bulgaria

Four young Bulgarian women, 2008.
Gender Inequality Index
Value 0.219 (2012)
Rank 38th
Maternal mortality (per 100,000) 11 (2010)
Women in parliament 20.8% (2012)
Females over 25 with secondary education 90.9% (2010)
Women in labour force 58.2% (employment rate Eurostat definition, 2014)[1]
Global Gender Gap Index[2]
Value 0.7097 (2013)
Rank 43rd out of 136
Bulgarian girls from Gabra, Sofia Province in traditional attire

Women in Bulgaria are European women who live in and are from Bulgaria.

Emancipation

Bulgarian women live in a society that is customarily patriarchal. While Bulgaria is often described as a patriarchal society, women may have substantial authority in household budgeting or agricultural decision making. Both men and women have the right to vote and own property. Women lag behind men only slightly in educational achievement. Despite decades of socialist ideology of gender equality, women are often employed in lower paying jobs, remain responsible for most household chores, and represent more than half the registered unemployed. They also occupy leadership positions less frequently than men. In 1996, fewer than 14 percent of postsocialist parliamentary representatives have been women, and only one in five municipal councilors were women in that year.[3]

Voting and government

Women obtained the right to vote in 1944.[4] As of 2014, there were 20.4% women in parliament.[5]

Employment

Many women entered paid employment during the socialist era, when an ideology of gender equality was promoted, and they made up nearly half the workforce in the late twentieth century. Women are frequently employed as teachers, nurses, pharmacists, sales clerks, and laborers, and less often involved in management, administration, and technical sciences. Women are also largely responsible for household tasks—child care, cooking, cleaning, and shopping. Agricultural labor is divided according to gender, with men working with animals and machinery and women doing more hand labor in crop production, although flexibility exists in response to specific situations.[3] As of 2014, the employment rate rate for women was 58.2% while for men it was 63.9%.[6]

Education

The literacy rate is slightly lower for women compared to men: the literacy rate is 98.1% for females, while for males it is 98.7% (aged 15 or older, data from 2015).[7]

Property inheritance

In principle, both men and women own property such as land, buildings, and animals, and inheritance is partible (i.e., property is divided among all heirs rather than going to a single heir). In practice, some heirs may be disinherited or may receive more land than their siblings, and daughters traditionally inherited less land than sons. The latter was sometimes explained in terms of the often large dowries of household goods and sometimes land or livestock that women traditionally took into marriage. Houses are often inherited by youngest sons, who bring their wives to live in the family home.[3]

Reproductive rights and health

The maternal mortality rate in Bularia is 11 deaths/100,000 live births (as of 2010).[8] The total fertility rate (TFR) in Bulgaria is 1.44 children born/woman (2014 estimates), which is below the replacement rate, and one of the lowest in the world.[9]

Military

In terms of military organization, women have historically been known to have been recruited to become soldiers for the Bulgarian army, particularly during critical times.

Marriage

While marriage was traditionally very important in Bulgaria, there has been a rapid increase in unmarried cohabitation after the fall of communism. The transition from communism to market economy had a great impact on the demographic behavior of the population. After the fall of communism, the legal and social pressure to get married has declined, and the population has started to experience new life styles.[10] As of 2014, 58.8% of children were born to unmarried mothers.[11] In the European Values Study (EVS) of 2008, the percentage of Bulgarian respondents who agreed with the assertion that "Marriage is an outdated institution" was 27.2%.[12] A new Family Code came into effect in 2009, modernizing family law.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Employment_rates_for_selected_population_groups,_2004%E2%80%9314_%28%25%29_YB16.png
  2. ↑ "The Global Gender Gap Report 2013" (PDF). World Economic Forum. pp. 12–13.
  3. 1 2 3 http://www.everyculture.com/Bo-Co/Bulgaria.html#ixzz2pkwtYQWf
  4. ↑ http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/womens_mobilization_for_war_south_east_europe
  5. ↑ http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm
  6. ↑ http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/d/d1/Employment_rates_for_selected_population_groups%2C_2004%E2%80%9314_%28%25%29_YB16.png
  7. ↑ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html
  8. ↑ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html
  9. ↑ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html
  10. ↑ http://www.researchgate.net/publication/200166754_Contemporary_union_formation_in_Bulgaria_the_emergence_of_cohabitation
  11. ↑ http://www.nsi.bg/sites/default/files/files/pressreleases/Population2014_en_2Y19BGI.pdf
  12. ↑ See Bulgaria: Variable Description - Family - Q 45.
  13. ↑ http://kenarova.com/law/Family%20Code.pdf

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