Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-18-Speech-1-025"
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"en.20101018.13.1-025"2
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"Mr President, we are having this debate today on women’s working conditions because women and men experience different conditions on the labour market. Women are trailing a long way behind men when it comes to wages, pensions, top jobs and executive positions. More than ever, therefore, we need the EU to take initiatives that improve the position of women on the labour market so that we can bring Europe into line with the treaty. We must ensure that women – whether they are from Portugal or Poland, Belgium or Bulgaria – are guaranteed equality on the labour market.
A major and important step towards complete equality is a new and modern piece of EU legislation on maternity leave. There are many good reasons for us to have new legislation on maternity leave in Europe. First and foremost, there is a risk that, before long, the EU will face a demographic crisis – a crisis that could be at least as serious as the economic crisis in which we still find ourselves. Women in the EU are quite simply not having enough children. If we are to retain our competitiveness in the future and create growth, which is necessary in order to maintain our level of prosperity, more children need to be born in the EU. We therefore need a maternity leave law that motivates families to have children.
A common high standard for maternity leave is essential in order to create an effective internal market. An internal market should not only be about cheap goods – it is just as important to ensure high social standards for workers. We must not have disparate competitive conditions, where it could be advantageous to lower the conditions for women, who will then become victims of social dumping.
Fathers must also have the right to two weeks’ paternity leave on full pay. If we are to create equality between men and women, we need to understand that men also play an important role in connection with paternity leave. This will have a beneficial effect on equality, the children and, not least, the fathers themselves.
We hear from the lobbyists for professional associations that this is a crazy thing to do and that we cannot afford better maternity leave legislation. I would venture to claim that quite the opposite is true. We cannot afford not to ensure that we have new, modern maternity leave legislation. It is a question of the health and safety of the EU’s women and children. Thus, this is not something that we should gamble with.
We must increase the participation of women on the labour market throughout the EU. The objective of the EU 2020 strategy is to get 75% of all women on to the labour market. As we know that currently, only 60% of women work, this will be a major challenge. We must succeed, however, and there is no doubt that good facilities for childcare are the way forward. A second and equally important initiative, however, is full pay during maternity leave. Only by preventing discrimination against women can we get more women on to the labour market.
Another important step towards more equality on the labour market is the report on precarious women workers, for which I was rapporteur. Unfortunately, the situation is such that women are significantly over-represented when it comes to these jobs. Women employed in private homes, in particular, have very precarious working conditions, characterised, among other things, by little or no job security, no social security, a high risk of discrimination and a poor working environment. We must not allow women to work under such poor conditions. The EU should therefore support the Member States to enable the precarious jobs to be replaced by proper jobs with decent working conditions. For a long time, we have neglected to focus on these vulnerable women, and it is my hope that the Commission will take this report seriously and help to take care of some of the EU’s most vulnerable citizens."@en1
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