“Women’s opportunities in terms of work career are limited.” Tiruhi Nazaretyan

“Conflicts in labor relations are especially affecting young women and mothers, in that sense they are vulnerable,” said the vice-president of the Republican Union of Agro-Trade Unions, chairman of the Tempus Center for Social Rights, lawyer Tiruhi Nazaretyan.

According to her, the Republic of Armenia has adopted laws excluding violence and discrimination against women in the workplace, ratified a number of ILO Conventions that directly prohibit all forms of discrimination against women, yet women are not protected from discrimination in the labor market. Due to her work, Tiruhi Nazaretyan often deals with women’s labor rights in the workplace, cases of discrimination against them. During our conversation, she brought some examples from her practice.

In one of the regions of Armenia, a greenhouse worker got married and when she returned from vacation, she was told that if she was going to have a child in the near future, she would write a resignation letter, as they were not going to hire a temporary employee.

According to our interlocutor, there are frequent manifestations of discrimination in the field of agriculture, where the problems of women working for vacation, signing a seasonal employment contract and other reasons are almost the same as in other fields.

The organization of labor rights awareness seminars is one of the important activities of the Tempus Center for the Protection of Social Rights. The seminars are aimed at raising the legal awareness of employees, it does not matter if the participant is a woman or a man. But here, too, the barriers faced by women deprive them of the opportunity to participate in seminars, for example, there is the problem of caring for a young child, and due to limited financial problems, the woman is unable to hire a nanny. According to T. Nazaretian, when a woman refuses to participate in a seminar due to child care, the director prefers to send a male employee instead.

At the same time, she notes that in our country there are also honest employers who create conditions for the advancement of employees, the number of which, unfortunately, is small, and if certain incentive mechanisms are used for such employers, their number will increase significantly.

According to T. Nazaretyan, it is clear that not everyone is a bearer of liberal ideas, not everyone aspires to a working career.

Full text in Armenian