The subsumption of the General Secretariat for Gender Equality (GSGE) and the Research Centre for Gender Equality (KETHI) into the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs by the Ministry of the Interior, comes as an unpleasant surprise for the Diotima Centre.

This decision, based on Presidential Decree 81/2019 No. 4 (2), was taken immediately after the formation of the new government, without prior consultation, discussion or information, raising questions and reasonable concerns.

The discrimination that women experience – over time and nowadays – is multifaceted and concerns all fields of political, economic, cultural and social life. Gender equality does not relate strictly to one field.

In this context, the two main and national central state institutions for gender equality have produced and continue to produce, through their multifaceted and multiannual work, policies and actions with a horizontal dimension in all public policies.

Their interventions are consistent on numerous issues, such as the prevention and response to gender-based violence and human trafficking, elimination of discrimination against women in employment, health, education, business, elimination of social exclusion and the threat of poverty for vulnerable groups of women (including single parents, unemployed, refugees and survivors of gender-based violence, etc.), equal participation in decision making and elimination of sexism in public discourse and the media.

Moreover, horizontal policies as a prerequisite for promoting gender equality are a basic direction of a number of international treaties that have been ratified and are binding on our country.

The most characteristic and recent example is the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, also known as the Istanbul Convention, which was ratified -just one year ago- by the Greek Parliament, becoming a law of the Greek state (Law 4531/2018).

Given these facts, the decision to integrate the GSGE and the KETHI into the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs seems incomprehensible.

Dethatching them from a ministry responsible for the entire public administration and local government and integrating them into the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs limits the possibility of pursuing horizontal gender equality policies, narrows the scope of these policies and restricts their character to a single sector. This raises valid concerns about the devaluation and degradation of both the main equality institutions and equality policies as a whole.

Indeed, in 2010, similar actions by integrating the GSGE into the Ministry of Justice had failed in practice.

We hope that this incomprehensible choice, which has no justificatory basis, will be reviewed immediately.

We call on the Government and the Prime Minister to reconsider the decision to place the GSGE and the KETHI under the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and to keep both bodies within the Ministry of the Interior.