Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-08-Speech-1-071"
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"en.20040308.7.1-071"2
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"Mr President, in my opinion of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, I emphasised two factors as being of special importance.
Firstly, there are the wage differences between men and women. As a result, families often choose, for purely financial reasons, to have the man work the maximum amount of time – that is to say eight hours and perhaps also overtime – and the woman work part-time. These wage differences, which are not chosen but are, rather, dictated by the wage conditions in the market, must be eliminated if families are to be able freely to choose the pattern of family life that suits them.
The second factor is working hours. It is becoming ever more usual for both men and women to work eight hours per day and, moreover, to have long commuting times to and from work. Thus, both parties may, in practice, have working times of nine to ten hours per day. This pattern entails an intolerable burden, especially for families with children. It leads to stress, burn-out, people going off sick and problems with family life. We must therefore – and I am almost the only person who dares say this nowadays – limit the amount of time spent working to, for example, twelve working hours per family per day. It is therefore crucial that we distribute working time equally between men and women, that is to say six hours for the man and six hours for the woman. Both where families and workplaces are concerned, that is much better than part-time for women and full-time for men.
The committee’s proposal includes the demand for equal wages but not, unfortunately, the demand for reduced and equally distributed daily working time. I therefore wish to repeat this important point: six plus six hours is much better than four plus eight hours. This is a crucial issue to which attention must be drawn on, in particular, International Women’s Day."@en1
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