Ms. Aleksandra Bojadjieva, from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, focused her intervention on the meaning of “specific measures for employment of Romani women”, based on some practical experiences. She first highlighted that, while there are initiatives and policies throughout Europe and measures have been implemented to tackle unemployment of Roma, these have rarely yielded results in terms of employment of Romani women. To have results in this sense, specific circumstances have to be considered within the employment measures for Romani women. She therefore focused her presentation on issues relevant for employment of Romani women from some communities throughout Europe i.e. the traditional role of the Romani women in the family and the community, the low level of education of Romani women that remains an important barrier to their employment and the language and information spreading barriers. She also elaborated upon possible measures to tackle those issues in designing and implementing employment strategies for Romani women. She indicated that employment measures should not automatically make Romani women ineligible for social benefits and at the same time impose the obligation of paying social contributions. If the authorities are to implement effective employment measures for Romani women, they have to get closer to the community and gain a better understanding including by involving Romani women from design to evaluation. Ms. Jocelyne Stevens, from Canada, presented some concrete solutions based on programmes that have been developed and implemented, specifically with regard to economic, social and cultural life, to address barriers to minority women’s empowerment, including culture, discrimination, language, education, lack of job opportunities, expected roles within their own families, and lack of community involvement which they felt heightened feelings of isolation. The programmes would consist of an integrated approach to classroom instructions, where mainstream community women would learn alongside minority women. She provided examples of concrete measures based on the results of these programmes. Examples of positive results included: in 2010-2011 the Government of Canada (Status of Women) have made it policy that all funding requirements and guidelines will include funding for various comprehensive data collection methods, such as Gender Based Analysis (GBA) and evaluation that will help identify factors that may impede women, including minorities, in decision-making and leadership roles; the implementation of a two-year "Mentorship for Visible Minorities & Newcomer Women" programme to prepare approximately 60 women and girls from the various ethno-cultural communities to become future community and business leaders by linking them with women mentors. Ms. Sonia Pierre, from the Dominican Haitian Women's Movement, made a presentation on the denial and deprivation of citizenship of Dominicans of Haitian descent and focused on the right to citizenship and the impact of its denial on the situation of some minority women in the Dominican Republic. She explained how the discrimination faced by Dominican women of Haitian descent has left thousands of them stateless and thus excluded from the political, economic, social and cultural development 19