Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-13-Speech-4-036"
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by congratulating the rapporteur on this extremely thorough examination of a very important cross-cutting subject. Greater participation by women in the economy and the fair sharing of power between men and women are actually prerequisites for development. If we cannot ensure gender equality in development we will never achieve either the Millennium Goals or sustainable economic growth.
Why in sub-Saharan Africa do women constitute only 34% of the workforce in regular employment? Why do these women’s earnings represent only 10% of total income and why do women own only 1% of the assets? Obviously these questions are extremely important. And why, as your report points out, do women make up 70% of the 1.3 billion people living in absolute poverty? What is illustrated here is a very particular kind of tragedy intrinsically associated with being female. Sadly there are too many such questions that we need to answer. Even in Europe, even in our Member States’ national parliaments with their reasonably high levels of female participation, there is no guarantee that women’s priorities will always be addressed.
With regard to our policy towards partner countries, we recognise the need to engage in really thoroughgoing political dialogue. I can tell you that dialogue on the issue of gender equality is not always straightforward: it can involve, for example, helping to ensure the breakdown of statistics by gender; or insistence that budgeting should take more account of the social sector, for in many cases education and health are not real priorities, although it is well known that women’s education and health are keys to development.
All these concerns are central to the Communication entitled Gender Equality and Women Empowerment in Development Cooperation, adopted by the Commission on 8 March 2007. The policy set out there constitutes a response to commitments made in the European Consensus on Development with regard to gender equality in all our cooperation policies and practices. The aim of the communication is to develop a European vision and to offer consistent support for the promotion of gender equality in all developing regions and countries.
The communication is also a guide to new aid modalities, notably budget support. I take issue here with the criticisms expressed in your report, for I believe that budget support offers new opportunities for effectively furthering gender equality. Why so? I have already outlined on a number of occasions the reasons why, insofar as possible, I have favoured budget support. The fact of engaging in budget support gives us incomparably greater leverage in political dialogue with the authorities of the partner country concerned. It enables us, for example, to discuss policy options and, among other things, the need for better promotion of women’s potential in a country’s economic and social development. Moreover, in such cases, we base our support on the verification of tangible results presented or revealed via indicators that are always gender-specific and therefore clearly highlight gender gaps where they exist. The objectives that we use to measure a country’s results are in line with the Millennium Goals and, for the most part, are highly relevant to the improvement of women’s living conditions. They include, to name but a few, increasing the proportion of girls attending school and increasing the number of ante-natal check-ups. The progress that a country makes towards meeting such targets is the basis on which the European Commission disburses variable tranches of budget support.
One of the speakers in the debate mentioned a form of conditionality. When you engage in budget support you are clearly able, to some extent, to oblige the partner to respect criteria and observe certain types of conditionality. In terms of positive influence, there is a stronger effect than there would be without the mechanism of budget support. Be that as it may, I am prepared to pursue this debate in other contexts. I am deeply convinced, however, on the basis of my experience to date, that budget support – where it is possible – is obviously a much more efficient way to proceed.
For a number of years we have taken a twin-track approach. Firstly, we integrate gender equality into all our policies and actions, including as part of budget-support arrangements and in political dialogue with our partners. One of the consequences of this approach is a need to train our colleagues who take part in delegations on gender-related issues. Since 2004, more than a thousand of them have received specific ‘gender’ training and we have now set up a gender helpdesk to pursue this training in the future. Secondly, we finance specific actions to advance male-female equality.
Actions of this type are included in certain national indicative programmes but, more importantly, there are also thematic programmes that complement geographically-based cooperation. For example, ‘Investing in human resources’ and ‘Human rights and democracy’ programmes incorporate specific elements for furthering gender equality. The ‘Investing in human resources’ programme has EUR 57 million for targeted ‘gender’ activities between 2007 and 2013: that is an annual average roughly three times higher than our spending up to 2006. Of course, gender equality is also incorporated into other thematic programmes whether for education, health or agriculture, or indeed for environment and culture.
It is true that we still have a long way to go but I am convinced that, with a shared commitment to promoting gender equality and, most importantly, in cooperation with women in the developing countries, we will be capable of fighting poverty and building fairer societies."@en1
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