The Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourova, and the Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli, presented, on Thursday 5 March, the strategy for gender equality promised by President von der Leyen.
This strategy should make it possible to define the political objectives and key actions to be implemented in the field of gender equality over the next 5 years.
Equal pay in the EU - where women earn, on average, 16% less than men per hour worked - is one of the Commission’s top priorities.
Today, it launched a public consultation on wage transparency and will propose binding measures on the subject “by the end of the year, after consultation with the social partners”, Ms Dalli promised the press.
The European institution also has set itself the objective of improving the balance between women and men in terms of representation in decision-making positions, particularly “by adopting European targets for gender balance on company boards of directors”.
In order to combat violence against women, the Commission also intends, according to Ms Dalli, to make EU ratification of the Istanbul Convention its “main objective” (see EUROPE 12228/4) and undertakes to adopt equivalent legal measures if this objective is not achieved.
On this point, it also aspires to ensure that certain specific forms of violence against women, such as sexual harassment, abuse of women and female genital mutilation, can be regarded as crimes at the European level. In order to act against online violence targeting women, it also wants to propose legislation on digital services that will specify the measures to be taken by platforms.
The Commission is also committed to mainstreaming gender equality in all of the Union’s policy areas. Mrs Jourova said she is “personally worried of a possible regress in equality” linked to the “great societal transition” that Europeans are facing.
“Being ‘green’ or ‘digital’ is a challenge also for equality. Algorithms or artificial intelligence can copy and amplify existing bias in ways we will have difficulties to understand”, she said.
“Binding measures must follow”
Several MEPs and organisations welcomed the initiative, but felt that the Commission could have been even more ambitious.
Evelyn Regner (S&D, Austria), chair of the European Parliament’s Women's Rights Committee (FEMM), welcomed the Commission’s strategy, but called for binding measures to follow. “The time for voluntary initiatives is over”, she said in a statement.
FEMM Committee Vice-Chair Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield (Greens/EFA, France) supported the same view. She also deplored the fact that “the Commission uses the term intersectionality as a slogan”, without proposing any legislative tools to combat discrimination.
Indeed, the text simply states that intersectionality - the simultaneous occurrence of several forms of discrimination - “will be addressed across EU policies”. This weakness was also pointed out by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR).
On equal pay, finally, the European Trade Union Confederation called on the Commission to implement its consultation quickly and to “empower women workers and their unions to negotiate the changes needed”.
See the communication: http://bit.ly/3aISu5B (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)