Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-03-12-Speech-1-043-000"
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"en.20120312.17.1-043-000"2
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"Madam President, firstly I thank Ms in ’t Veld for her report, in which she covered the whole spectrum of gender equality issues. We have already debated many issues thoroughly in the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality and also in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.
Equality between women and men is a pillar of the Treaties and of the Charter and of the Commission’s Strategy for Equality, but inequality in real life remains significant unfortunately. The Commission has put on the table many initiatives to fight inequalities. I shall just quote some of them: the Europe 2020 Strategy, where everybody agreed that we need to reach an employment rate of 75 % by 2020. Men almost tap this ceiling, but women are lagging behind hugely, most of all when women become mothers as they then work much less, whereas when men become fathers they work much more on their jobs, so something in our society is going wrong here. This is mirrored in the difference in average pay between men and women.
This year we fixed 2 March as European Equal Pay Day, because before that date the average paid to women was not the same as average male income. So we cannot continue to act as if this is business as usual because the difference has been maintained and progress is very slow.
We also know that we cannot afford in our society and in our companies not to utilise the female talent. 60% of women are university graduates – just look at the top level – but you do not find them in our companies at those levels which should be normal judging from their education. We all know that we are running out of talent in our societies, so we need more than ever for the untapped potential of women to be integrated into our economic world.
Parliament has asked me regularly to propose legislation to increase female representation on corporate boards if self-regulatory measures fail. You also know that I started with a self-regulatory initiative one year ago, and that I presented a report one week ago, after one year, and progress in Europe has gone from an average of 12% to 14% for women on the boards of listed companies. If I analyse where this progress has taken place, in three quarters of the Member States matters are at an absolute standstill. Progress has only been achieved in those Member States where there are national quotas – in the Netherlands from 14% to 19% in one year, and in France from 12% to 22% in one year, which really shows us that maybe it will be necessary to go one step further than just incentives.
So I launched the public consultation – the first ever public consultation by us on this subject, by the way – and we are obliged to have a public consultation before we come out with a proposal. This public consultation is not about whether we need more women in decision-making at an economic level, but how we should get there. The public consultation will run until 28 May and following the input the Commission will then take a decision on further action later this year. I count on the strong support of Parliament to make further progress.
To make further progress also in the political field, because there also participation by women is stagnating and no clear positive trends are being seen, several political parties have discussed the best way to increase participation by women, and six EU countries have introduced binding measures to increase the number of women in politics: Belgium, France, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. The only thing which is growing is the idea that increasing female representation in political decision-making is good for democracy and good for economic prosperity. So I would like to thank Ms Pietikäinen very much for her efforts to put all the facts and figures on the table, to analyse why the facts and figures, unfortunately, are very disappointing, and to trigger a debate which is absolutely necessary not only in this House but also in the Member States – in the Member States where women on average only make up 25% of members of national parliaments and only 23% of senior ministers.
I hope very much that tomorrow’s vote will be a strong message to improve the representation of women in politics and a source of inspiration for all stakeholders involved at national level. We need this strong message because there is a lot of movement in our Member States to get out of the actual situation, but they need to be helped and to be supported. I call on this Parliament tomorrow to help them and to support them."@en1
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