Around 1.4 million women are absent from Romania's labor market, and integrating even 10% of them would ease the pressure on the state budget and help rebalance the economy, Cristina Chiriac, president of the National Confederation for Women's Entrepreneurship (CONAF) declared on Tuesday at a labor-market debate.
"In Romania there are 1.4 million women who are completely outside the labor market. Imagine what it would mean if just 10% of them received retraining or upskilling and entered employment, how much pressure would be lifted from the state budget and how we could rebalance the social categories currently dragging down Romania's economy," Chiriac said at an event organized by the Coalition for Trade and Communication Freedom (CLCC), agerpres reports.
One of the main causes of inactivity, she noted, is the lack of early-education infrastructure, especially in economically weaker counties.
"Most of these women who end up as housewives do so because there are not enough nurseries or kindergartens where they can leave their children, or because wages in those areas are so unattractive that they weigh the cost of childcare against what they would earn," she explained.
Chiriac argued that solutions must be part of a differentiated economic strategy, tailored to each county, given the major disparities between strong economic centres and low-potential regions.
"If we talk about a strategy not only for employment, but for retraining and reintegrating these women into the labor market, it must start with economic policy. The social and economic gaps in Romania are so large that you need targeted policies for each county. Today we talk about statistics; tomorrow we will talk about failed generations," she warned.
Increasing employment of the active population and slowing the exodus of workers are essential, Chiriac added, to prevent a "deeply unbalanced Romania", despite efforts to attract investment and fill labor shortages with non-EU workers.
The CLCC debate held on Tuesday focused on new labor-market rules, including hiring foreign workers, salary transparency and preventing workplace stress
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