Future First Lady Wants to Focus on Gender Equality and Support Single Parents

The Czech Republic is a country that is unfortunately still rife with gender inequalities. The new first lady, Eva Pavlova seeks to correct this issue, claiming that she wants to help single mothers and discrimination against women in society.

Indeed, statistics make it clear that this is an ongoing issue, within the Czech Republic, only 28.4% of women hold managerial positions compared to the 34.7% EU average.

Similarly, women in the Czech Republic earn 16.4% less than their male counterparts compared to the 13% EU average and a far cry from the 0.7% gender pay gap in Luxembourg. Furthermore, this is even though women in the Czech Republic are generally better educated than men, with almost 30% of women possessing tertiary education compared to 23.6% of men.

It’s also clear that outside of the system societal discrimination against women in the workforce, there is also an issue regarding single-parent families.

According to SocialWatch, 87% single-parent households are made up of single mothers.

Therefore, single-parenthood is predominantly an issue that affects women, although single fathers also face similar issues. These issues most notably that single parents are 2.8 times more likely to be threatened by poverty even if employed.

Moreover, they are at significantly higher risk of unemployment than complete families and benefit from limited social assistance by EU standards.

Ms. Pavlova comes from Šumperk where she graduated from high school in 1983, and eventually entered the Military Pedagogical College in Bratislava.

In 1985, she met her future husband Petr Pavel at the military base in Prostějov. Like Petr Pavel, Eva Pavlova was a member of the communist party of Czechoslovakia prior to 1989.

They got married in 2004 while Pavel was the Chief of the General Staff, and Pavlova oversaw communication with foreign military and air force attaches in the Czech Republic.

“Not much has changed since I was in that situation. This surprised and troubled me in relation to those women, that it is not at all easy even today. I went through a divorce. The divorce rate is increasing, single mothers are worse off today than we once were. I would
love to work in this area, to show these women places where they can get help and where that help works,” she said.