A Festival for Dads was held on Wilson Promenade in Sarajevo, as part of a campaign to promote gender-responsive family policies.
The festival for dads was intended for families, dads, moms and children and included various activities aimed at motivating fathers to be actively involved in the care of children, their upbringing, education and development, such as: baby swaddling/changing, baby race/push race, fathers’ pushcart race, quiz and many others. Mravko Travko and his team also prepared a performance for children, and the company Violeta rewarded the participants with their products.
The event is part of the campaign “Parenthood has no gender” carried out by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Sarajevo Open Center (SOC) to promote engaged fatherhood and initiate discussions about the barriers that fathers in Bosnia and Herzegovina face in accessing the right to maternity leave that is guaranteed to them by law at all levels of government.
A 2022 survey by the Sarajevo Open Center showed that almost 60% of fathers do not know that they have the right to maternity leave, and only 2.6% of them used this right. Those who did use maternity leave encountered certain ambiguities and administrative barriers that slowed down the process of exercising this right. This can further discourage fathers from using maternity leave, which can ultimately intensify the unequal distribution of care for family members, i.e. all the burden of care will fall on mothers who therefore have to make additional efforts to balance family and professional life.
“SOC works in parallel to address the issue of maternity benefits for mothers and generally strengthening legal and social conditions for dignified motherhood, but this is not the only way to ensure a quality family and business life for women. There is no true gender equality until fathers also have an adequate opportunity to participate in the care of children, and one of the initial conditions for ensuring those opportunities is to strengthen awareness at the level of society about the father’s role in raising a child and the fair redistribution of work between partners,” said Emina Bošnjak, executive director of SOC.
Precisely because of the high level of lack of information about legal possibilities and guaranteed rights, the organizers want to influence the public’s awareness that both parents, in accordance with mutual agreements, can use maternity leave, which brings many benefits – from strengthening the relationship with the partner, creating and strengthening the relationship with the child, to higher incomes in the household.
“Men in BiH have a key role in promoting gender equality. Gender-sensitive policies for the protection of the family are a key tool in this and they allow for paternity leave immediately after the birth of a child, parental leave, leave of a person equal to a parent who takes care of a child and the implementation of flexible working hours. In addition, these policies are considered key to mitigating negative demographic trends in BiH and will help the country strengthen its resilience,” said John Kennedy Mosoti, UNFPA representative in BiH.
In the coming period, UNFPA and SOC will continue to advocate the flexibility of maternity/parental leave through labor laws, social protection and gender-responsive family public policies, in order to improve gender equality and the protection of rights related to parenthood, fatherhood and motherhood.
