KAGIDER’s guest Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Ekrem Imamoglu:

“We will form a gender equality division”

KAGİDER continues its Breakfast Meetings with guests who are experts in their field. The first guest of the new season’s first event is the Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Ekrem Imamoglu. Necati Ozkan undertook the moderation of the meeting and directed questions of KAGIDER members to Imamoglu. KAGIDER President Emine Erdem made the opening speech of the event and started her speech by thanking Ekrem Imamoglu for his contributions to establish gender equality on economy and social life. Erdem stated that local governments should be sensitive on gender equality and she emphasized the significance of cities being women friendly. Erdem added that municipalities should adopt gender equal principles on labor force and provide social support services to enhance women’s participation to the labor force.

Emine Erdem: “Women Entrepreneurs have demands from municipalities.”

Emine Erdem stated that women entrepreneurs who came together under KAGIDER had demands from local governments. She listed the demands as following: there should be more women mayors and members of parliament, women have to be represented more in these areas, municipalities should provide services for both their women employees and women under their areas, municipal kindergardens can be run by women entrepreneurs so that it can be a new field for women entrepreneurs. ‘’There is need for gender-segregated data collection at regional and local levels. In the municipal courses provided for the local community and women who has limited access to education, there should be educational trainings prepared by collaboration of the business world. To ensure work efficiency and social balance, municipalities should include and encourage women more on work and service models. In addition, municipalities should also give women suppliers a chance and opportunity so that women suppliers can also take place in the process. Our slogan is “Buy from Women, Make Country Win”. Increase in the implementation of policies that include women means that family and child are also included.’’

Ekrem Imamoglu: “A society where women do not take place they deserve cannot be peaceful”

Ekrem Imamoglu has said that “gender equality is not an issue specific to our country, it should be considered in whole world.” “In our country, the rate of inequality is significantly high. We are far behind on women’s participation in the economy and politics, which is so sad. It is inevitable to create gender equality without doing positive discrimination. That’s why, I have an obligation to develop model implementations to support women equality in an important city of Turkey: Istanbul. Gender equality is necessary for the peace of the society. I don’t believe that a country where women don’t have their deserved place, can be a productive and developing country. The half of the population is women.”

Women who work in municipality increased by 18%, number of women managers increased by 20% and our aim is to reach 50%.”

“We need to motivate mechanisms that ensures gender equality. We see this as a social problem and we act sensitively to increase the number of women managers. In one year, the number of women employees in the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality has been increased by 2 thousand; the women employees who work under municipality increased to 13 thousand from 11 thousand. It means approximately 18% increase. The increase of women managers is 20% in a year. We will work through this issue. It is necessary to reach our institution to contemporary level because the efficiency and respectability of the institution where women takes place equally increases. Our aim is to increase women employment and make the number of women managers reach 50%. Also, we want to develop in terms of quality, we care about women’s participation.”

“Istanbul planning agency is a field where people from all parts of Istanbul, non-governmental organizations and our institution come together and talk about future vision. Today I will offer gender equality board for Istanbul.”

“While conduction our work, we are looking for answers to questions such as “Is there an appropriate language for gender equality? Is it a budget that cares gender equality? These criteria were also included in the process of our budget works during my period of Beylikdüzü Municipality. I think that we established gender equality as an aspect reflected in the budget; however, we have one to two years for it.”

“Istanbul will grow its own seed and we are establishing a greenhouse in an area around 6 thousand square meters.”

“We have started projects that supports producers in Istanbul’s villages. Our project that provides 3 million seeds to the producers accelerated the production. It offered contributions to families’ budgets. The significant part of the support we provide contributed mostly to women because when we have visited the villages, we saw that the most of the producers are women. I cannot describe the happiness in their faces. We have a new project. We are establishing a greenhouse area around 6 thousand square meters and with this greenhouse Istanbul will be a city which grows its own seed.”

“I care about the citizens and my work, not my competitor.”

“A KAGIDER member asked “Would I have been more considerate if my competitor was women in the last elections?”. If my answer were yes to this question and if I behaved different against my female competitor, I would not have an equitable understanding. I have a strategy that I do not care about my competitor. I care about the citizen and my work, I not my competitor.”

“Through open tender, we provide equal competition environment.”

We care about transparency in our tender processes. We broadcast the process of certain tenders live on the IBB channel. There are many tenders with large budgets so that it is not possible to broadcast all of them but we try our best to broadcast as much as possible and we go through open tender processes. This method provides equal competitor environment. ‘’

To watch the video: https://youtu.be/Tb-lP32Sx7k