The University of Belgrade Faculty of Law as the coordinator received the grant for Erasmus Plus KA203 projects – Strategic Partnership in Higher Education, for the project: New Quality in Education for Gender Equality – Strategic Partnership for the Development of Master`s Study programme LAW AND GENDER. The project will last three years.

Prof. Dr Dragica Vujadinović from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law is the head of the LAWGEM project and the contact person for it.

The Consortium members are: Libera Universita Maria SS. Assunta di Roma, Department of Law – Lumsa University Palermo (Italy), Orebro University, School of Law, Psychology and Social Work (Sweden), Universitat des Saarlandes, Faculty of Law Europa-Institut (Germany), Universidad de Cadiz (Spain).

The objectives of LAWGEM are, firstly, to build a fully innovative systemic curriculum of master‘s legal studies (the main intellectual outcome), which will encompass all relevant fields of legal education and legal practice, as well as non-legal relevant fields – like economic analysis of law, criminology, socio-psychological fields of research and knowledge. The second intellectual outcome will be the Textbook relevant for the Law and Gender master‘s programme; the third intellectual outcome will be a legal clinic on gender equality, the forth one – an on-line platform for life-long learning (LLL) on gender issues, which will contribute to disseminating awareness on gender equality and enhancing the knowledge and practice in the field of combatting all forms of gender-based discrimination, violence and sexual harassment. And the fifth intellectual outcome will be an empirical survey tool for investigating the academic staff`s opinion on gender equality issues related to the institutional, educational and cultural framework.

The Consortium of European universities has been gathered with the specific objective to contribute to gender mainstreaming of legal studies through jointly building the master’s study program LAW AND GENDER. This pioneering and fully innovative academic undertaking will certainly contribute to gender sensitive reconstructing of all most relevant fields of the legal knowledge production. This whole process and the end result will be stimulating for the general improvement of higher education and legal studies in all Consortium members, as well as in the EU.

The necessity of a gender-sensitive approach in legal education emerges from the highest value and normative standards of modern international and national law. Educating students of law (future lawyers, judges, prosecutors, administrative workers, members of parliament and government bodies) in a gender-sensitive manner means a real investment in better legislation and a more correct interpretation and implementation of law. It also means an investment in a better future by sensitizing judges in particular, but also legal professionals in all fields of legal practice. This serves the fulfilment of the essence of contemporary law – equal respect and protection for all individuals. The aims of the programme shall be to offer adequate knowledge and skills for the work on both legal and non-legal jobs related to gender mainstreaming in all relevant fields of politics, law-making and law implementation in the judiciary, decision-making in the state administration, state/regional/local policy-making related to economics, social security, media, culture, and concerning the academic gender-sensitive knowledge production in the fields of law as well as social sciences and humanities.