The University of Belgrade Faculty of Law has a pleasure of hosting an international conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education: International Good Practices and Local Contexts on 20 October 2017 which was organized in cooperation with the The Center for Human Rights of the Faculty of Law and OSCE.

The aim of the conference was to bring together university professors, experts, and policy-makers to discuss emerging issues and best practice of gender mainstreaming in higher education. The particular focus of the conference was on gender mainstreaming in legal education. The program of the Conference  is available here.

This conference was very well attended from the beginning up to the end. A large number of students and professors joined the event. They came not only from the Belgrade Faculty of Law but also from other faculties of social sciences and humanities, as well as from faculties of engineering and technical sciences. The welcome speeches of the Dean, Vice Rector, Deputy Minister of Education, Director of the Center for Human Rights and OSCE representative gave a very substantial welcome speeches, which clearly referred to an importance of gender mainstreaming of higher education and to an importance of faculties of law in that respect.

Three sessions were devoted to very interesting lectures related to the topics: Gender Equality and Knowledge Production: Hierarchies of Exclusions (Prof. Dr. Marina Hughson), Men and Masculinities in Academia, Higher Education and Science (Prof. Dr. Jeff Hearn), Gender Mainstreaming in Higher Education: Nordic perspective (Prof. Dr. Liisa Husu), Gender Equality and Diversity Policies, Construction of Scientific Excellence in Academia ( Prof. Dr. Marieke van den Brink), Gender Mainstreaming in Higher Education: Resistance and Contemporary Experiences (Dr. Marcela Linkova), Teaching Gender Studies in Law: Opportunities and Challenges for Legal Profession ( Prof. Dr. Susanne Baer), Gender Mainstreaming in Legal Education ( Prof. Dr. Nevena Petrušić, and Prof. Dr. Dragica Vujadinović). Sessions were moderated in a high quality manner and many questions provoked interesting discussions.

The last session of the conference was devoted to the Round table, titled: “Towards a Comprehensive Policy Approach in Gender Mainstreaming in Higher Education”, in which took part the high representatives of the most important Serbian governmental and independent institutions as well as of the university and EU delegation in Serbia. Participants were: Ms. Brankica Janković, Commissioner for Protection of Equality , Prof. Dr. Ivanka Popović, Vice-Rector, University of Belgrade, Mr. Meho Omerović, Chair of the Parliamentary Committee for Human and Minority Rights and Gender Equality, Mr. Nicolas Bizel, Head of Section for Justice, Home Affairs and Social Inclusion, EU Delegation Serbia, Prof. Dr. Tanja Miščević, Head, Negotiation Team of the Government of Republic of Serbia , Prof. Dr. Branka Drašković, Coordination Body for Gender Equality of the Government of the Republic of Serbia.

All participants of the Round table gave relevant information and insights regarding the attempts of their referential institutions to enable processes of gender mainstreaming in higher education. They also responded to numerous questions from the audience.

Conference booklet is available here.