Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-06-15-Speech-2-588"
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"en.20100615.32.2-588"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the report which I am presenting here is the result of collaboration under the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, which also included a hearing with women’s organisations and experts, and participation by the European Commission itself. My thanks to everyone involved.
According to our analysis of the 2006-2010 Roadmap for Equality, we believe that some progress has been made, and prominence has been given to some key aspects of equality between women and men. In actual fact, however, they have not been fully realised because the political force needed has not been there.
It is especially worth emphasising the inequalities that persist in real life, such as difficulties in accessing jobs with rights and decent wages, poverty, continuing discrimination and stereotypes which help to perpetuate inequalities, including access to training and professional advancement to leading positions, and in economic and political life. Existing contradictions in EU policy also contribute towards this, and have given rise to more than 85 million people in poverty, most of them women and children, as a result of unemployment, job insecurity, low wages, pensions below the minimum subsistence income, and poor access to quality public services.
The current economic and social crisis has particularly serious consequences for women, and this exacerbates inequalities and discrimination. This is the case with unequal pay between men and women, which is over 17% on average, and indirect discrimination, which tends to worsen when employment rises, affecting women and young girls.
The jobs created in recent years, particularly those for young people and women, have been largely insecure and poorly paid, without respecting basic rights, especially for maternity. This has also contributed to the low birth rate. The widespread discrimination to which specific groups of women are subjected is particularly serious. The groups worst affected are the elderly, women with dependents, immigrant women or those from a minority, and women with disabilities.
Besides the high levels of poverty and unemployment, violence and discrimination have also contributed to the persistence and even the increase in trafficking of women and children and to prostitution in various EU countries. This requires an urgent response. Unfortunately, the proposals contained in the Europe 2020 strategy presented by the Commission did not deal with the gender perspective in a satisfactory way. We therefore hope that this situation will be revisited and that, above all, in developing the Strategy for Equality, the Commissioner will seek to respond to these issues. However, this goes beyond a single area of the European Commission, and there needs to be much greater involvement. Of the numerous measures outlined in the report, therefore, I would like to emphasise four areas.
At institutional level, we propose that the new strategy on equality should be an agenda for action and a political commitment, based on the Beijing Platform for Action and the progress that it has made, and acknowledging that the human rights of women and girls are an unalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights. We also advocate the Council’s adoption of the Commission’s new proposal on the Strategy for Equality, having consulted Parliament. This seeks to give equality policy greater political force and provide it with new impetus, as well as assigning Union funds to it, with a view to its effective achievement. We believe the annual tripartite meeting between the Council, the Commission and Parliament to be vital, as it looks into the progress of the strategy for gender equality in the European Union, along with an annual conference on gender equality involving women’s organisations and trade unions in various Member States, and, of course, MEPs and national MPs, paying particular attention to a predetermined theme every year.
I would also like to draw your attention to the need to include the mainstreaming of the gender perspective during the preparation of all the proposals. Finally – I am about to conclude, Mr President – I would like to mention our insistence on the application and implementation of measures that have already been announced, be it the Institute for Equality, the Centre on Violence or the full application of existing directives, so that we can make the emancipation of women and their personal and professional fulfilment the central goal of our initiative and the strategy itself. Thank you very much. Please be sure to consider the recommendations that we have made here."@en1
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