Suzi Kvas: Make room for women!
Suzi KVAS is Lead Partner in WEED (Women Enterprise and Employment in Local Development) in Celje, the third largest city in Slovenia. She is 37 and a strong advocate for promoting women on the workplace.
Suzi Kvas first taught in schools and at the university before directing Javni Zavod Socio, an organisation founded by the city of Celje to offer a selection of social services. Suzi then became an active member in a number of European networks focussing on social issues.
Celje, the third largest city in Slovenia, after Ljubljana and Maribor, has a population of 50,000. On the European scale, this is a small city, but it has experienced strong economic and social growth. Despite this growth, Suzi notes that “women are still lacking in positions of responsibility and women still have to work harder than men to reach the same status.” This was a strong motivation to exchange with other European cities on the topic by creating an URBACT II project.
Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004, and WEED is the very first URBACT project in which the city of Celje has participated. The first experience that Celje shared with WEED partners was that of Devana, a women’s association. “In 2004, a group of women involved in the public sphere in Celje, including myself, founded an organisation to promote equal opportunity.”
Suzi remembers the beginning of this adventure: “We started without a penny, without jobs, but with a lot of enthusiasm. We worked for two years without any aid and accomplished a lot of work.” Suzi feels she learned a lot from Devana, particularly during a meeting with organisations from former Yugoslavia that were working on similar issues.
She regrets that women are not more persistent in scientific, technical and research jobs, areas in which they could “do better than men.” Suzi is a woman of conviction and intends to continue pursuing her ‘cause’, both in her city and at a European level.