Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-11-Speech-2-387"
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"en.20080311.34.2-387"2
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"Mr President, first of all I would like to thank the rapporteur, Ms Klaß, and the members of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality for their own-initiative report. We all know that keeping the issue of gender equality high on the agenda requires a continuous effort. I have always considered the European Parliament as a leading institution in this respect, and I want to pay tribute to the work done to help celebrate International Women’s Day 2008, including last week’s conference.
An important point is the protection of self-employed women during pregnancy and motherhood. A review of this Directive is set down in the legislative working programme of the Commission for this year, 2008, and this will give us another opportunity to support and improve the position of women in rural areas.
Once again, I thank the rapporteurs and all those who have contributed to a very important issue.
I fully agree that women in the countryside should have real opportunities and should be encouraged to use all those opportunities. Overall, I therefore agree that women in rural areas need particular political attention, and I am glad that this principle is implemented via the Community strategic guidelines for rural development under the third axis, where the encouragement of women’s entry into the labour market is stressed as a key action.
The rural economy needs women, not only in order to keep up with economic growth in the rest of society, but also to ensure sustainable rural development, where families and companies see a real future in staying in the countryside.
Before answering some of the specific issues highlighted in this report, I would like to stress that the principle of promoting equality between men and women is central for the second pillar of the common agricultural policy. In practice we apply it in two main ways. The first is a creation of an economic opportunity for women through, for example, the promotion of women’s entrepreneurship.
Importantly, in the context of the rural development programmes for the period 2007-2013, some Member States have designed specific measures for women; other Member States will give priority to applications from women under certain measures.
The second aspect of the improvement of the quality of life in the countryside: the objective should be a women-friendly countryside, facilitating women’s lives in rural areas and allowing women to make better use of their potential. For example, rural development supports the funding of day-care centres for children in the countryside so that women have the possibility to stay out there but still to take upon themselves the possibilities of a job. I think these are examples of agricultural common policy actions that contribute to the improvement of the situation for women in rural areas.
I would also like to highlight the LEADER programme in this context, which contributes to improving the involvement of women in the decision-making process in the local action groups. In fact, the number of projects managed by women is, for LEADER, higher than the projects that are managed by men: for the period 2003-2005, two out of three beneficiaries were women.
Concerning the specific requests included in the report, I agree that there is a necessity to monitor and to evaluate the integration of the gender perspective into the rural development programmes. Indicators, which will show the results and impact of certain measures in the period – again – from 2007-2013, are broken down by gender, and they should give us the necessary information.
Finally, I would like to mention one point that is not really related to rural areas. The Commission has initiated an impact assessment as part of the review of Directive 86/613/EEC, which deals with the principle of equal treatment between self-employed men and women, including those in agriculture."@en1
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