What does UNIFEM do, anyways?

I have often been asked what my internship entails. Now that I have been here almost two weeks, I can explain things better (not perfectly, but better). Here is what I sent to my Alumni person at Penn describing UNIFEM and me:

My MSSP internship is with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in their Skopje, Macedonia office. UNIFEM provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programs and strategies to foster women's empowerment and gender equality. UNIFEM focuses on reducing feminized poverty, ending violence against women, reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls and achieving gender equality in democratic governance in times of peace as well as war. Personally, I am working on a project surrounding women's economic rights in Macedonia. I am reviewing Macedonian legislation and policy to see where UNIFEM can support a project to further women's equality in the work place.

As you are aware, I turned in my first paper yesterday and I think Audrey (my supervisor) liked it. Now, I just have to hope Dean Gelles and Ms. Cassie do as well. Today, I am learning about the Human Rights Based Approach to development. It deals with Duty Bearers and Rights Holders...so within this framework and based on the paper I just wrote, I have to figure out an entry point for UNIFEM surrounding women's economic rights. I keep hearkening back to my Poverty, Welfare and Work class (Hi Dr. Iversen!) where we discussed many items, one of which is whether there are actually jobs available to people once they complete their training (this is in America, but applies here as well). As you may know, Macedonia has high unemployment, for both men and women. As you can imagine, there is also lots of underemployment because individuals need a job, period. So the government of Nikolai (that is the first name of the Prime Minister and, as you can see, we are on a first name basis) is trying to make Macedonia a Business Heaven so jobs and industry can grow (from foreign investors), thus helping alleviate some of the unemployment and raising the standards of living for all Macedonians. Which goes back to job training and job availability, oh and women. I want to make sure that women have equal access to the training and hiring processes, especially if the much desired foreign investment comes in. I want women to know that it is illegal for their contract for employment to be based on whether they are going to have children in the near future. Potential employers frequently ask if young women plan on having children and make it a condition of their contract that if they become pregnant, their contract is terminated. I know the same thing goes on behind closed doors in the States - let's hire the young man instead of the young woman because we don't have to worry about maternity leave. How am I going to do this? I am not sure, but this is what is swirling around in my head at the moment.