Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-24-Speech-1-232-000"
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"en.20111024.21.1-232-000"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to begin my speech first of all by thanking the shadow rapporteurs and all my fellow Members who have helped to enrich the report with new ideas, in order to support this vulnerable group of women who, not by choice, find themselves alone having to deal with their children growing up and then the need to pursue their own careers.
This category of women is at high risk of poverty and needs support from Europe’s institutions in the form of specific kinds of assistance. I am honoured to have been entrusted with the responsibility of drafting this report on the situation of single mothers in Europe. This is the first own-initiative report by Parliament aimed at identifying measures to support single-parent families.
Several months ago, I organised a public hearing in Parliament to invite experts from single-mother support groups and to achieve an initial exchange of views on the priority areas in which we should act and support single mothers. In recent months, I have met with single-mother support groups from various Member States, including Ireland, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Belgium. In Brussels, I took the opportunity to pay a personal visit to an association where single mothers live, and during my visit, I was able to exchange information and ideas with the head of the organisation and gain a closer understanding of the difficulties that these women face every day. On my trip to Warsaw with the delegation from the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, I was able to examine the benefits and measures in support of single mothers in Poland.
Single mothers are an overlooked demographic category. Geographically, across Europe, there are different perceptions and policies towards single mothers. In the southern Mediterranean countries, such as Italy, Portugal, Spain and Greece, it is generally accepted that the extended family will assist in bringing up single-parent children on a voluntary basis without reimbursement. In the northern and Nordic countries, such as France, Sweden, Germany and Denmark, government welfare systems are in place to help single mothers with benefits and social assistance policies. In the Eastern European Member States, there is a general mix of policies, some holding on to strong familial values from the Communist regimes and others having a mix of the northern and southern European policies.
At present, 5% of European women are single mothers. In some Member States, such as Estonia and Latvia, the proportion is as high as 9%. Single mothers are often stigmatised as being irresponsible teenagers, whereas in fact, 85% of them are aged between 25 and 64. In addition, the negative effects of the financial and economic crisis that has been felt across the European Union have hit this group of women especially hard.
Already burdened with the gender pay gap, single mothers are hampered by the need to take on debt and care for their children. The state of health of single mothers is statistically more unstable than that of married women. They are under more stress because they single-handedly carry out tasks normally performed by two parents. They often cannot afford adequate medical care and do not have time to rest. Statistically, single mothers throughout Europe are less educated than their married counterparts, and so they also find entering the labour market difficult and beset with obstacles.
The report is full of new initiatives and, especially, new goals that the European Union should set itself, because this is a subject that needs to be put at the heart of the Union’s list of priorities, particularly since the number of such women is growing across Europe."@en1
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