VILNIUS: Lithuania’s centrist Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis came under fire from women’s rights advocates on Wednesday for naming the EU’s only all-male cabinet after a government reshuffle in the Baltic state.
Lawmaker Kestutis Mazeika was appointed as environment minister on Wednesday at Skvernelis’ request after he had replaced two female ministers with men earlier this year.
“This is scandalous,“ opposition leader Viktorija Cmilyte-Nielsen, a liberal, told AFP.
“Fourteen male ministers isn’t a coincidence. If you toss a coin 14 times, you probably won’t get the same result.”
Although Lithuania has a history of women in top positions, Cmilyte-Nielsen said that gender inequality is still prevalent.
She identified a number of factors, from insufficient public childcare to stereotypes in the heavily patriarchal society.
Kazimira Prunskiene served as Lithuania’s first prime minister after it declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1990 and Grybauskaite was elected as a president in 2009, and re-elected in 2014.
But for Cmilyte-Nielsen, “the counterargument that the president is a woman is only an exception that proves the rule that men dominate in decision making process”.
Virginija Langbakk, a director at the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) in Vilnius, warned that male domination in government meant the interests of women might be under-represented in policy-making.
“Lithuania has many highly professional women but none of them was picked to be a minister. This is proof of a democratic deficit”, she told AFP.
Tomas Berzinskas, a spokesman for Skvernelis, said gender was not a factor in the prime minister’s choices.
“The premier looks at the professionalism and not the gender when he chooses candidates,“ Berzinskas told AFP, adding that many women serve as deputy ministers and fill other senior positions.
A former national police chief who took office as premier in 2016, Skvernelis will run for president in a two-round election on May 12 and 26.
Recent opinion polls showed him trailing independent economist Gitanas Nauseda and conservative ex-finance minister Ingrida Simonyte, the only female candidate. — AFP
