Tirana, 9 December 2014 – The Coalition for Women and Youth in Politics in collaboration with the Human Rights House in Albania / CRCA Albania, supported by Olof Palme International Centre, shared publicly today, at a special event, the National Awards “Woman of the Year 2014” in Albania.
Woman of the Year 2014 in Politicswent to Ms. Nora Malaj ( 1,601 votes or 38 % of the votes cast for women in politics), Woman of the Year 2014 in Economy / Businesswent to Ms. Era Xhabafti (3131 votes or 49 % ), Woman of the Year 2014 in Civil Societywent to Ms. Suela Lala (1286 votes or 28 %). In this event, was also divided a Special Award postmortem for Ms. Nimfa Jaço, for her great contribution to the civil society in protection and promotion of human rights and especially women.
This initiative, launched in early October, aims to empower women and girls in Albania, which contributes in recognizing and encouraging their efforts, in challenging environments such as politics, economy/business and civil society. During 2015, another category ‘Women in Media’ will be added to the award.
From an analysis of all the data, it results that on the website www.crca.al/voto has had more than 30,000 clicks and 15,047 votes for 21 honorable ladies. In total, on the social network Facebook, the award is share in 8380 pages and to over 8627 other pages ( twitter etc).
The voting phase was preceded by the phase of online nomination of women and girls who have made their contribution during 2014 in our country, in three categories: Woman of the Year 2014 in Politics; Woman of the Year 2014 in Economy / Business; Woman of the Year 2014 in Civil Society. This stage lasted two weeks and resulted in about 90 applications with 46 names, nominated in the three categories. The Category Woman of the Year 2014 in Civil Society had the highest number of nominations with 23 names, followed by the category Woman in Politics with 16 names and then Woman in Economy / Business with 7 names. After a preliminary calculation of number of times each candidate was nominated and voted in advance by members of the Coalition, were selected 10 candidates in the category of Politics, 3 candidates in the category of Economics / Business and 9 candidates in the category of Civil Society, to continue the race of online voting.Later on, the selected proposals were voted online by the general public for a period of one month.
This Award aims to serve also as an encouragement for women and girls to support and motivate other women and girls, in the years to come, who wish to work in politics, civil society and economy.