According to a recent study, Albanian women are more educated than men, get better grades, work in more diverse and specialist industries, and work for more hours in the week. Despite this fact, they are paid less and are missing from managerial, supervisory, and senior C-level roles. Even more concerningly, over half of Albanian women will experience domestic violence at least once in their life and many more will be harassed on the street, online, and at work, just because they are women.
But this is not a pity party. Albanian women are tough, smart, resilient, and determined- they always have been and some of the most inspiring women I have met have been Shqiptare.
I am not an Albanian woman, but I am the mother to one and I have chosen to live here, and as such, I wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate women in our society that I feel are setting a good example for those around them.
“52 Gra Shqiptare” or “52 Albanian Women” is a project that will take place over the course of a year. Each week I will interview one woman that I think is a leader in her field, an inspiration, “killing it” or that is top of her game. I will publish the interviews ad verbatim and seek to explore, not just what the woman does, but why she does it and who she is.
We will look at the challenges women face in 2020 and how they overcome it, as well as finding out what motivated each of them to choose their particular path.
Activists, academics, journalists, business owners, professionals, doctors, and women with a voice, in the public sphere- these are the people I will be speaking to.
My aim is to offer success stories and to provide readers and other women with inspiration and motivation to follow their chosen path, despite any family, societal, economic, personal, or other obstacles put in their way.
Unfortunately, the fight for gender equality is far from over in any society, not just Albanian and as women, we have a duty to empower each other and to offer our support and guidance at every opportunity. That is why I decided to do this series.
The first instalment will be published tomorrow! Watch this space.
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