EU Liberals defend gender equality policies

Claims that Europe's Liberals are failing to effectively promote women's rights are "ridiculous", according to ELDR president Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck.

Launching the Socialist manifesto last week alongside PES president Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, Zita Gurmai, the president of PES women, said she was "disappointed that there is no gender issue" in the ELDR manifesto.

However, Neyts-Uyttebroeck said there were no specific proposals "because gender equality is so much in our genes".

"I'm the president, being a woman, five of our seven vice presidents are women, our secretary general is a woman," she told theParliament.com.

"So we always pay extreme attention to the fact that whenever we set up a debate we have women panellists. This has had a nice trickling down affect on delegations of our member parties, which are well balanced."

While she acknowledged that specific policies were needed to ensure gender equality, Neyts-Uyttebroeck said the ELDR had wanted to create a short document focussed on the areas important to member parties.

"Gender equality is one of the absolute core principles of our actions," she insisted, arguing that the PES female vice presidents were invisible to the rest of the world including the EU.

Gurmai told this website that the Liberals should have displayed a greater commitment to women's issues.

""Knowing ALDE group leader Graham Watson and knowing what they do in the parliament - they are gender sensitive," she said, adding that she was "disappointed" that they failed to focus more on gender equality.

"They have strong women in the liberal group so that's why I don't understand why they don't have a stronger message for women," she argued.

She said she was "very proud" that a major part of the Socialist manifesto was championing gender equality in Europe. The PES has a quota of 40 per cent for both sexes in its party statutes, she said.

Equality

The PES want to create a women's rights charter to promote gender equality in economic and political life, are calling for better parental leave rights and want to see a new post of gender equality commissioner created.

The manifesto also includes plans to tackle domestic violence and crack down on human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

On the EPP, Gurmai commended women's organisation chair Doris Pack for "trying to do a very good job", but said it was clear that the EPP were not in favour of introducing a quota for the number of female MEPs. "They may be trying to see more women but the question is how," she added.

Speaking at last week's PES manifesto launch, Rasmussen said, "If you want to continue with having unsecure conditions for women on the labour market; if you want to continue by seeing the Czech presidency's attempt to call into question the EU's child care targets and to promote so-called home child care by mothers… [then] take the EPP please."

However, EPP political adviser Emanuela Farris insisted that gender equality "is a strong priority".

"But in comparison to the PES we have no specific section on this because it's a very simple and common sense logic that you cannot fight gender inequality by having a top-down approach and by having a chapter in a political manifesto," she said.

"On the contrary we write in our manifesto, in the values, that we would like gender policy and gender equality issues to be spread out on the whole range of policy options.

"So it has to be better integrated… there is no such thing as one single area where you can fight for women's rights. You have to integrate this in all policy areas."

The EPP manifesto includes measures to help parents, especially women, balance work and family commitments. It calls for strengthened flexibility in the workplace and better access to childcare facilities.

"On the part that deals more with demographic challenges, we have specific actions that include tackling gender equality issues," Farris said.

"Specifically we have a whole chapter dealing with family friendly policies which can help young women reconcile the demands of family, education and work.

"Points that are mentioned include encouraging parental leave, in general to remove all those obstacles that hinder women to participate better and in a more efficient way in the labour market."

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