SCW discusses women's advancement plan

Manama, Oct. 19 (BNA): The Secretariat-General of the Supreme Council for Women (SCW) held a preparatory working meeting at the SCW’s premises here yesterday. The meeting, attended by the SCW’s members, discussed the results of the evaluation of the National Plan for the Advancement of Bahraini Women (2013-2017), and the expected action in the coming period, in accordance with the programmes and initiatives of the next Government Action Plan and the fiscal balance strategy of the national economy, and their impact on the Bahraini women’s advancement plans. The visions and remarks will be included in the recommendations to be submitted to next month’s meeting, set to be chaired by Her Royal Highness Princess Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa, Wife of HM the King and SCW President. SCW’s Secretary-General, Hala Al-Ansari, said that the meeting is in line with the SCW’s work method, which is based on constant evaluation of work in order to enhance the quality of its work to ensure the sustainability of women’s advancement and participation in the development process. The aim is to monitor the main challenges and improvement opportunities in order to take them into account during the preparation of the National Plan for the Advancement of Bahrain Women for the period 2019-2022, she said. She added that the evaluation results included the implementation progress rates of the projects and programmes emanating from the National Plan for the Advancement of Bahraini Women by all partners, adding that the preliminary results showed that the policies of the kingdom have gone beyond the phase of meeting the basic needs of women’s empowerment and care, and moved towards enhancing women’s self-empowerment and ability to take the right decisions, and play an effective role in developing their society. She pointed out that the recommendations of the meeting would be a roadmap for the next phase, including innovative and flexible plan implementation mechanisms, activation of the national governance system to achieve gender balance, working with partners through strategies aimed at improving the quality of women-oriented programmes and services, launching model programmes and projects, creating impact measuring indicators and conducting more studies and field surveys to measure women’s advancement progress. The meeting also discussed creating link in the SCW’s website through which the citizens could submit their proposals regarding ways to enhance women’s role in society, which, she said, would contribute to determining the guidelines of the next strategic plan.