Brussels, 15/02/2005 (Agence Europe) - The second annual report on gender equality, which was adopted by the European Commission on 14 February, is the first to cover the European Union of 25 Member States. It states that equality between men and women in the EU is reinforced by the European Constitution, which presents equality as a value to promote not only within the Union, but also in relations with the rest of the world. The report, which is directed to the forthcoming Spring Council, states that the inclusion of the gender dimension will help to achieve the general objectives of the Lisbon Strategy, but that in order to achieve this, new initiatives must be taken to meet the challenge of the ageing population, which means in particular that adequate pensions must be granted to men and women and the full potential of working women must be realised, including among older women and immigrant women.
On the inequalities between men and women, the report notes: on employment rates, in 2003 there was a 15.8% gap between salaried work of men and women (55.1% for women, which the Commission interprets as meaning that it is still possible to achieve the interim Lisbon objective of a female employment rate of 57% in 2005). For unemployment, the gap was 1.7% in 2004 (10% unemployment among women and 8.3% for men). In 2004, 30.5% of women in the EU were working part-time, compared to 6.6% of men; -the salary gap, in 2003, was estimated at 16% on average in the EU of 15, thus remaining stable, and the estimation for the EU of 25 was slightly lower (15%); -on average, 23% of MPs within the EU are women (but with big differences from one Member State to the next), whereas the number of women in managerial posts has risen by an average of 1% since 2002, to reach 31% in 2003 (however, they are still very much the exception on the boards of directors of the top fifty companies); on education, the gap between men and women between 20 and 24 attaining secondary level education was 5% in 2004 in favour of women, whilst in 2002 some 80% of university lecturers were men and that, in 21 Member States, more women than men took part in life-long education.
Under these conditions, the Commission has announced the following guidelines: reinforcing the position on women on the employment market, which means in particular that the Member States must be persistent in attacking remuneration gaps and the segregation of the employment market, propose instruments allowing women with children or dependents to work full-time if they wish, adapt pension regimes and other social provisions, and ensure that activities paid for by the structural funds, especially the social fund, aim to “fight sexist stereotypes in teaching and on the employment market”; -improve care service for children and dependents; -target men to achieve gender equality. Here, the Commission stresses the role of the Member States (flexible organisation of work the better to reconcile professional and private life, shared parental leave systems) and also of the social partners; -include gender as a factor in immigration and integration policies, particularly by making sure that the integration of immigrants is in no way blocked when transposing the directive on family reunification in the Member States; - assess progress in terms of gender equality, which will be facilitated by the proposal that the Commission is to make in the spring on the creation of a European gender institute.
In conclusion, the Commission calls on the Member States to continue their efforts to include the gender dimension in all political fields “in order to achieve equality of the sexes”. This will call for: -a swift and correct implementation of the directive of September 2002 on equality of treatment in access to employment, training and professional promotion and working conditions (to be transposed in October); -cooperation with the social partners to reduce payment gaps and segregation on the employment market; -the promotion of the employment of immigrants and guarantees of their fundamental rights; -an examination of pension schemes (the results will be presented next July, as part of the next series of “strategic reports” on this subject; better offer of care services for children and other dependents; -the use of “all available resources via the structural funds” to promote equality; -the development of a range of key indicators to assess the state of progress in equality between men and women.