Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-03-12-Speech-1-049-000"
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"en.20120312.17.1-049-000"2
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"Madam President, I would like to start by thanking Ms in ’t Veld for her excellent report, which highlights a number of important issues within the area of equality. This includes, for example, the need to expand care facilities such as pre-school facilities and homes for the elderly, to close the pay gap among women and to call for legislative measures to combat the violence of men against women. I am also pleased that the report stresses a woman’s right over her own body and thus her right to access contraception and to a safe and legal abortion.
There is one point that I do not agree with, however, and that concerns the question of prostitution. I have a slight problem with the concept of forced prostitution. This would rather imply that you think that there is such a thing as voluntary prostitution. In my view, this is quite wrong. The prostitution system as a whole is based on the exploitation of women, commercial ruthlessness and an outdated view of men’s and women’s sexuality. I will therefore vote against Amendment 7 tabled by the rapporteur. Otherwise, it is an excellent report, which I support in its entirety.
I will now turn to the other rapporteur, Ms Pietikäinen. I would really like to thank you for your open way of working. That has undeniably helped to make this report such an excellent one and to really emphasise the participation of women in politics. The EU and its Member States must work much, much harder to ensure that more women are treated equally in our representative democracy. We need to put an end to the current quota of men. Despite the fact that women make up 50% of the population, they are not at all democratically represented in political assemblies. In the European Parliament, they constitute just over a third. In the national parliaments the situation is even worse. On average, women do not even make up 25%. This is embarrassingly low. We cannot just continue to simply talk about changes. What we need now is action. In many cases, there will be a need for legislative measures in order to get to grips with this.
One option could be – if necessary – to introduce different kinds of quotas. However, just as Ms in ’t Veld said, that is perhaps not the place to start, but at some point we will have to deal with this issue. Certain people are appalled at the idea of quotas. Well, I agree with them – I am appalled at the current male quotas. This is something that happens informally and on the quiet, but men are nevertheless given preference at the expense of women. Some people even say that it is bad for women to be elected on the basis of their gender, but instead it is more likely the case that the current male quota is harmful to men, as people assume that many men have been elected simply because they are men. In the name of democracy, we must therefore achieve a system whereby women’s and men’s experience can be utilised in a much clearer way and reflected in our parliamentary assemblies. Therefore, vote in favour of Ms Pietikäinen’s report."@en1
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