WUNRN
European Women's Lobby - EWL
Direct Link to Full 54-Page European
Commission Report:
EU - Equality Between
Women & Men in 2011: Setbacks & Small Steps Forward
17 April 2012 / Anna Elomaki
The report looks at progress over the past
year in tackling the remaining gaps between women and men in employment, the
economy and society in general. Most of the figures are from 2010, meaning that
the full impact of the crisis and the austerity measures are not yet visible in
them. However, a comparison to the Commission’s report from the previous year
reveals concerning developments.
The report reveals that women’s employment
rate has decreased slightly (from 62.5% to 62.1%) and a larger proportion of
employed women work part time. When measures in full-time equivalents, in
average less than 50% of female workforce in the EU is employed.
The new figures reveal that care
responsibilities have an increasingly negative impact on women’s employment. In
average in the EU, women’s employment rate now decreases 12.1 percentage points
when they have small children (11.4 in the previous report). The number of
women who are inactive or work part-time due to the lack of care
responsibilities has increased from 27.9% to 28.3%. The situation of women with
care responsibilities has worsened significantly in
On a positive note, the gender pay gap has
narrowed slightly across the EU. On average, women earn 16.4% less than men for
every hour worked (. The gender pay gap is caused by multiple factors such as
labour market segregation and differences in educational choices.
The report also lists the measures taken by
the European Commission in the five key areas in the EU’s overall gender
equality strategy for 2010-2015, namely: the economy, equal pay,
decision-making, gender-based violence and gender equality beyond the EU.
The Commission has raised awareness and
proposed potential solutions to the gender pay gap through the second European
Equal Pay Day. Slow progress in narrowing the gender gap in company boardrooms
led the Commission to launch a public consultation on possible measures at EU
level to address the problem, which risks holding back innovation and growth in
Finally, the Commission took an important
step towards the goal of ending gender-based violence by proposing a package of
measures to strengthen the rights of crime victims. This included a series of
measures specifically aimed at helping women who fall victim to domestic
violence.