Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-08-Speech-1-025"
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"en.20100308.13.1-025"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, a society in which men and women do not have equal rights in work and life is not a democratic and humane society. The basic prerequisite for justice in society is that it is administered regardless of a person’s gender. That is something we men take for granted, not so women, even in Central European societies, not by a long shot. That is seen most clearly in one of the greatest scandals which I believe we must rid ourselves of as soon as possible. As Parliament, we could make a significant contribution to this.
Really, how can a society rightly maintain it is equal if men and women receive different pay for the same work in the same place? Nowhere is the discrimination of women in this society more frequently accepted without comment than in places of work, where women do the same work as men, to some extent, under far more extreme living conditions, and receive largely 30% or 40% less pay for it. We must rid the EU of this shame. If we here in Europe are to send out a message on International Women’s Day, let it be equal pay for equal work in the same workplace, for both men and women. That is a central requirement of social justice.
We have acknowledged that the Commission is making an effort. We can see that today, the European Charter on Women’s Rights is about to get off the ground. That is good and we welcome it. However, we are a little disappointed and I ask you to pass this on to Mrs Reding and Mr Barroso. We would have liked this launch to have been more than a formal statement; we would also have liked the promise that was originally made to have been kept, namely that Parliament will be involved and that the agencies of civil society must be involved. Now this has not happened. We can still make up for this. However, we would appreciate it if there was more than simply a formal statement and the institutions cooperated to help rectify the particular example that I have just mentioned. My fellow Member, Mrs Wortmann-Kool, has mentioned other examples.
On International Women’s Day, there is one thing we Europeans must all acknowledge: in our continent, we still have not achieved equal rights, but the dramatic injustice towards women in other parts of the world, ranging from genital mutilation to the compulsory wearing of the veil, all these basic fundamental rights that women and, above all, girls worldwide are deprived of, should not only concern us on 8 March.
For that reason, I would like to offer my thanks to the human rights experts in Parliament. Here, every Thursday afternoon during the Strasbourg week, we discuss, among other matters, human rights violations towards women. On International Women’s Day, we should also say that these debates on Thursday afternoon deserve at least the sort of attendance that we have now in plenary."@en1
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