Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-01-Speech-3-104"
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"en.20000301.6.3-104"2
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".
Mr President, I am grateful for the liveliness of the debate on this issue, the ways in which it has been addressed and the positions adopted on it in this House. Members were prepared to discuss rather than simply raise questions and we have heard some valuable insights into the topic being discussed. We have all recognised that if democracy is to be strengthened, it is crucial for women to have greater decision-making powers and to participate more in the decision-making process. This was universally acknowledged. The differences of opinion were about how this objective can be achieved. When quotas were being discussed, I had the impression that in certain statements made by women Members, the quotas themselves were the objective, and as such, should therefore be opposed. To my mind, quotas will – as was stated here, moreover – be merely a provisional instrument.
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I can tell you what happened in Portugal last year when a law on quotas for party lists was discussed. This government bill was rejected by our parliament, and all our political leaders stated that quotas were unnecessary because, of course, women and their skills were essential in strengthening the democratic process, so in the imminent elections the lists would reflect the need to take advantage of women’s skills. The lists were published, the elections were held, Parliament was convened and only one group, the Greens, which has just two women MPs, fulfilled the commitment that they had all given, and exceeded it at that. This is the reality of the situation. I do not think that anyone in this House feels that quotas are a positive thing, but they are perhaps a necessary stage in the process, not because men do not acknowledge women’s competence, but because positions that women deserve to hold have, for a long time, been occupied by men. Furthermore, it is difficult to take people off the final lists in cases where a certain personal fondness may be involved. This is one problem.
Another problem is the fact that women are not generally interested in participating in politics. Women obviously find it hard to be interested in taking part in politics as they have much less time available to them than men and as the organisation of the political parties, which is thoroughly male-oriented, serves as an excuse for time continuing to mean different things for men and women. If a political party holds a meeting in the evening and the man cannot go home because he has to attend as he is a member of the party’s executive, that is seen as a good reason for the man not to go home to play his part in the household chores, which are also his responsibility. Therefore, until there is a change in this idea of sharing, sharing the responsibilities that the right to have a family implies, obviously nothing will change in terms of women being able to participate in the political process.
Indeed, we are still suffering from problems whose causes we have not yet resolved. However, in order to find these solutions, we need measures for positive action which contribute to them. One woman Member of this Parliament said that this problem must not become a battle of the sexes. I too agree that it should not be a question of war between men and women, because thinking men and women who are genuine democrats agree that we would be justified in considering that the present situation does not reflect a genuine, representative democracy.
I therefore fail to understand what the problem with quotas is, given that in principle, they will only be used as an instrument in countries where women are under-represented and where these draft laws have been approved in parliaments where, by definition, men are in the majority. If they approve these laws, it is because this process is about consensus, not imposition, nor is it a battle of the sexes.
So I think that all this needs to be studied and debated. We need to know whether it is worth continuing to wait for decades until this process resolves itself naturally by means of an increase in the numbers of women in higher education, at universities, and in their economic and social power. This might finally happen unaided in approximately the third millennium. Or perhaps, on the other hand, we are already in a position today, thanks to the use of procedures such as benchmarking and statistical information gathering, for assessing how positive the results are in terms of good practice, and we have what we need to build the very thing we all claim to believe in: a democratic and pluralist society based on balanced participation by men and women. These measures for positive and balanced action respecting people’s dignity must be adopted in various areas. At the moment, we are not taking advantage of women’s dignity, usefulness, competence, their vision of the world, their knowledge, their ways of being, knowing and acting, and these qualities are being completely wasted across all social, institutional, economic and political processes.
The presidency is therefore extremely keen to support initiatives designed to radically change this situation, even if it has to use transitional instruments which have already proved to be the only way to achieve the objective of balanced representation in decision-making processes. The presidency is extremely anxious and entirely committed to support these methods, not as objectives in themselves but as a means to an end. Today, figures are available which show us the reality, which reveal the enormous disparities in this area between the various countries that constitute the EU and we are therefore fully briefed about the situation. It seems to be a universally acknowledged fact that greater involvement of women is essential. Instruments are available to us which can provide a more balanced division of tasks between men and women, so that they can reconcile their private and professional lives. We must therefore make use of whatever instruments for positive action we may need in order to change the current state of affairs."@en1
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