Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-19-Speech-4-057"
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"en.20060119.5.4-057"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin by congratulating the very few men who have been present at this debate and the even smaller number who have spoken. It all goes to show that women are right to say there is still a lot of work to be done. I therefore wanted to truly congratulate those who have taken part in the debate, because it deals with a subject that does not concern women alone, but is the concern of all of society and everyone involved in society. That is the perspective in which the Commission intends working on this problem.
I would also like to say that I share the main ideas that have been expressed in this Assembly and to which I have listened most attentively. I do not, on the other hand, agree with certain speakers who want to keep women in stereotypical roles, I would go so far as to say roles of another age. Working women are not the cause of unemployment. That is an argument we hear all too often in some quarters and it is clearly against such arguments that we need to fight, because they are preventing significant progress being made in some countries.
That being the case, what is the Commission doing? I would like to point out that, for the most part, the demands that have been made are matters for national policy. It is still up to the Member States to legislate on the major questions that have been raised. I do of course recognise that the Commission has its part to play and I am going to explain the areas where it intends taking action and how.
The new integrated guidelines clearly restate the necessity of making the gender dimension, gender mainstreaming, part of all employment policies and they reaffirm the need to promote equality between men and women in every action undertaken. The new strategy for employment takes up the target of a 60% employment rate in 2010. In particular, it includes in the guidelines the elimination of gender disparities and the promotion of reconciliation between professional and private life.
The Commission has also made mainstreaming a fundamental principle of Community action. May I remind you that it is included as such in Article 3 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community. Mainstreaming is implemented through a Community framework strategy for equality between women and men. This strategy seeks to establish a framework for action in which all Community activities, including economic activities and policies and employment policy, can contribute to achieving the objective of eliminating inequality and promoting equality between women and men. The Commission is currently preparing a roadmap for equality between men and women, which will take over from the framework strategy starting in 2007. Like the framework strategy, its aim will be to implement gender mainstreaming effectively in all Community policies, and more particularly the Lisbon Strategy.
I would like to say a word about the pay gap. The pay gap between men and women is a complex phenomenon and discrimination is not its only cause. In fact, it results from a number of factors, such as segregation on the employment market, the persistence of stereotypes, especially in education and training, and the difficulty of reconciling professional and private life. We therefore need to respond to all these underlying factors. I would like to emphasise the particular attention we intend paying to reducing the pay gap in the employment strategy. Two guidelines call explicitly on the Member States and the social partners to work towards this. It should also be noted that the Austrian Presidency has announced its intention of organising a conference on the subject of the pay gap in Brussels at the end of May, and I think it will be quite a special opportunity for making new progress in this field.
A word on the method of studying and analysing the changing position of women on the employment market from the point of view of awareness of their rights and of the role of men. The Commission is constantly monitoring equality policy and regularly undertakes or commissions analyses and studies of the economic and legal aspects of equality. The annual report on equality between men and women, which the Commission has presented to the spring summit of the Heads of State or Government since 2004, is a very important document for monitoring the question of male-female equality in the European Union. The report sets out the main changes in the respective positions of women and men in education, employment and social life. It identifies the progress made and the challenges still to be taken up. From this point of view, too, the Commission is also analysing the Member States’ national reform programmes under the Lisbon Strategy, and this will be an important contribution to the ‘Employment’ chapter of the annual monitoring report.
How does the Commission intend improving the statistical methodology to take account of the gender aspect? The gender dimension is of course included in the statistics. This is done by using a statistical methodology and statistical data that take account of the gender aspect. As the draft resolution underlines, the availability of adequate, consistent and comparable statistical indicators is absolutely essential for policy monitoring. Eurostat is collaborating actively with the national statistical institutes in order to put in place a common methodology that will enable reliable and comparable data to be collected at European level. It is in fact important that such data should be collected at that level. The future Institute for Gender Equality should also make a significant contribution to improving the statistical monitoring of equality policy. I would nevertheless like to point out, because I believe it is useful to tell things as they are, that this institute will be primarily a technical instrument and will certainly not be a political body or a supplier of financial resources.
Such, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, is the Commission’s response; it fully shares the concerns expressed in the report and once again congratulates the rapporteur on her excellent work."@en1
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