Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-03-08-Speech-2-040"
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"en.20050308.6.2-040"2
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"Mr President, it is ten years since I was in Beijing representing the Irish Government as a Minister of State and I am happy to be here today to reaffirm the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Yes, gender equality is one of the major values the EU stands for and it would be very helpful, in selling the new Constitutional Treaty, if we stressed that it is reinforced in the Treaty.
Huge differences also exist between the theory, or the rhetoric, and practice on the ground in relation to women's equality, the
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situations. We must ensure, however, that we bring men, particularly young men, into this debate. Their role models might have dominated women and not understood the concept of equality and so might not have been of the type we want our sons to become today. We are talking equality and not dominance here. They might have been brought up in religious fundamentalism and other cultures, where there was serious oppression of women and physical and sexual violence against women.
This is about choice. Since we have been able to control our fertility, women can now choose to have one child, no children or ten children. This is all about ensuring that women have the freedom to choose. That is what the debate must be about. But we must structure society so that, if women wish to become mothers, they can actually do that and bring up their children without economic pressures that drive them out of the house when the baby is six weeks old.
We must structure society and family life today in such a way that it allows women to have a second child. The pressures on young women today in my country, for all its economic success, are such that they cannot afford a second child. They cannot afford not to work; they need the two salaries to pay the mortgage. They cannot afford childcare or care for elderly parents.
The traditional roles of women in childcare and care for the elderly are all part of this wider debate and it is not possible to do justice to the subject in two minutes. Mothers cannot be fathers and fathers cannot be mothers. Ideally our children should have both. That will not always be possible, but let us have a broader and balanced debate and restore choice for women. Then they can be properly liberated."@en1
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