Brussels, 07/03/2013 (Agence Europe) - Unsurprisingly, the condition of women has worsened with the crisis. Ahead of International Women's Day this Friday, the European Parliament committee on gender equality focussed its discussions around women's response to the crisis, at a joint meeting with national MPs on Thursday 7 March.
Although statistics show that the employment gap between men and women has narrowed, this should be largely ascribed to a fall in employment for men rather than to any improvement in the situation for women. Initially, the crisis had an impact on construction and industry, sectors which employ mainly men, before hitting the services sector, in which women are more active.
“The crisis has particularly affected this vulnerability of women in employment and increased it considerably. Fixed-term contracts, part-time contracts and contracts offering no security were the first to be destroyed by the economic crisis”, said Elisabeth Morin-Chartier (EPP, France) whose report on the impact of the crisis on gender inequality and women's rights will be adopted by the Parliament next week. She can only lament the fact that the salary gap between men and women continues to be over 16%. She lays the blame for this at the door of discriminatory recruitment practices. Indeed, a flash Eurobarometer carried out for the European Parliament in February shows that the main criterion for the recruitment of a woman is whether or not she has children, “a negative discriminatory criterion”, Morin-Chartier laments. Availability and physical appearance follow, with professional experience coming only in seventh place. This, however, is the main recruitment criterion for men, with children coming only in 10th place. “This analysis shows us the society in which we are living, when we read these criteria we can see that there is much work still to be done. The fight against stereotypes is also extremely important”, she stressed.
Like European Commissioner for Employment Laszlo Andor, who spoke in a video message, she argued that the European Social Fund has a role to play, particularly to set in place practices to get women back into work. The commissioner takes the view that making childcare accessible and getting more women into scientific training and careers are also important challenges.
MEP Zita Gurmai (S&D, Hungary), member of the FEMM committee, then stressed the need to review European legislation on all these issues: “We need to adopt binding legislative measures in order to fight these problems. We need to go beyond the political boundaries on all of these issues which are so important to us. And if the Council does not get behind us, we will have to meet it head on”. (MD/transl.fl)