WUNRN
Europe - "Reinforcing
Employment and Economic Reactivation Policies with Gender Approach"
June 7, Madrid, Spain - European Women’s
Lobby - Final event of the Spanish EU project:
Thank you for inviting me as
a new President of the European Women’s Lobby to address you at the moment in
which global social, economic and financial crisis is hitting nearly all EU
member states and your own country even harder than most of the others. A
project you are just finishing has never been more needed than now, but the
challenges to make it succeed were never greater than now.
EU 2020 sets the target of 75
% employment rate for women and men. Before the start of the recession 10 member
states were above 65% employment rate mark for women, in 2011 Estonia, Latvia,
UK and Slovenia slipped below this mark. In this moment, in EU 27 we have 3.66
million of men and 3.8 million of women out of employment, education or
training. For majority of EU member states EU 2020 target looks further away
than 4 years ago.
Gender impact of this crises
management in EU reminds me very much of the situation in the first years of
transition in former socialist countries. There too the main issues were financial
consolidation and balancing of the budget and the cure was identical to the one
administered now to the financially destabilized EU member states. In many
aspects the detrimental impact on gender equality in the first years of the
transition crises was the same as now documented in the research that I quote.
Pay gap diminished as men became less paid, the share of the women sole
breadwinners went up, the fertility rates nose dived. With one difference: the
buffers in former socialist states were not male and female migrants and youth,
but blue collar workers, women, pensioners, people form ethnic minorities and
young people.
Like in transitions of the
1990, now, in a number of EU member states, the most hit by the crises, one can
see: the labor market segregation by gender is deepening, pensions, wages,
social transfers and benefits are being delayed, working conditions are
worsening, infringement of the pregnant women to maternity leave rights and
benefits or to resume their job after maternity leave ,is becoming a problem in
Spain, in Poland, in Italy in Czech Republic, in Slovenia . New jobs, for women
slightly more than for men, are mostly worse protected and less paid jobs on
short contracts. Like in transitions a decade and a half ago, women in EU now
are acting, not as victims, but as the survivors of the crises – but for what a
price? Working more, less protected for lower wages, working more in unpaid
home care economy, accepting to feed their families and often their men alone,
suffering from additional pressure of discrimination and violence at work place
and at home, postponing motherhood or totally rejecting to give birth.
After all these negative
trends manifested in the first years of the crises, the worst it seems, is
still to come, as the effects of the fiscal consolidation and measures are
still to be felt:
Fiscal consolidation: the measures 1
1 Crises and gender in 33 Euroepan countries
Downword leveling of equality or opportunity for change
Francesca Bettio, University of Siena and Fondazione Brodolini
Based on the report of the EGGE/ EGGSI network
(co-authored with M. Corsi, M. Samek, A. Verashchagina)
The quoted research enlisted the following most frequent consolidation measures in 19 countries: AT, BG, CZ, DE, EL, FR, FYROM, HU, IE , IS, LI, LV, NL, MT, PL, PT, RO, SE, UK
On the expenditure side:
• Wage freezes or wage cuts in the public sector (11 countries);
• Staffing freezes or personnel cuts in the public sector (9 countries);
• Pension reforms: postponing retirement and/or bringing the age of retirement for women in line with that for men (8 countries);
• Cuts and restrictions in care related benefits/allowances/facilities(8 countries);
• Reduction of housing benefits or family benefits (6 countries);
• Tightening of eligibility criteria for unemployment and assistance benefits or reductions in replacement rates (5 countries);
On the revenue side:
• Tax measures (6 countries);
• VAT increase (5 countries);
• Increase in fees for publicly subsidized services (health care fee
transport fees, others) (2 countries).
How the impact of this fiscal consolidation approach is working in practice, in a concrete country, I can illustrate with the example of my own country, Slovenia. Measures which disproportionanaly hit women go like this:
Care for the sick family member – from 80% of the pay to 70% of the pay.
Second child in the child care – before 0 now 30% of the economic price
From 1st of September 2012 no more additional subvention for the food in the schools, child allowance for the middle class families with 42-53 % of average income per family member is lowered.
Pensions are frozen and those higher than 622 EUR per month are substantially lowered, yearly allowance for recreation is canceled for all pensioners with the pension higher than 622 EUR per moth.
Maternity leave indemnity is lowered from 100 to 90% of the pay
Wages in public sector (80% women jobs) are frozen till 1.1.2014, in 2013 no bonuses for better work, no promotion by wage classes, food subsidy diminished for 3.52 EUR per working day
Yearly allowance for recreation and holidays diminished to the amount decided by the government in 2012 and 2013
Bonuses for working age are diminished and only the time spent in public sector work counts
Bonuses at retirement are diminished from 3 to 2 last wages
Solidarity support only for the people who earn less than minimal wage, and in case of illness only to those who are on sick leave more than 6 moths
All wages in public sector are cut for 8%
In case of budgetary misbalance VAT can be raised for 3% points each year
Conclusion: my government has started an undeclared war against educated middle class working women!
On 7th June 2011 in the context of EU 2020 Strategy, the Commission made country specific suggestions for Council recommendations. The focus was on encouraging member states to take necessary measures in order to
- promote reconciliation of
work and private life by providing available and affordable child care services
- enable access to more
flexible working arrangements
- establish adequate tax
and benefit systems in order to enhance female participation rates
What will Commission say on
June 11, 2012 for example, to the Spanish government which has just seriously
worsened flexibility of working breastfeeding mothers?
Few weeks ago, EC has
published its regular Progress on Equality between women and men in 2011
report.
In 2011 average employment
rate of women in EU 27 was 62.1 %, but in Spain, Hungary, Greece, Italy and
Malta it was only between 55,6 and 45.6%
Average gap between
fulltime and part time work for women and men was at -18.1 for women, but in
Germany, Greece, Luxemburg, Italy, the Netherlands and Malta it was between -
21.9 and 36.8%.
Difference between
employment rate of women without and with children under 12 in EU 27 was -12%
for mothers, but in Germany, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary and Czech R as much as
from 19.2 to 31.6%.
Pay gap in EU 27 in average
is – 16.4%, but in Cyprus, Germany, Austria, Czech R and Estonia it is between
21 % and 27.6%.
In EU 27 18,1% of women and
12.9% of men older than 65 were in risk of poverty after social transfers. But
from Portugal to UK, Slovakia, Slovenia Bulgaria and Czech R. this risk for
women was between 23.5 to 47.5% , The biggest difference between old women and
men in this cumulative indicator of economic gender imbalances is in Slovenia:
27.1% of women and 9.3% of men.
EU needs serious
investments not only in new sustainable technologies and infrastructure, in
renewable energy but also in highly professional care jobs. But how it will
crate them if it is on its way to cancel even the very concept of indivisible
human rights, of universal access of its citizens and residents to dissent
work, to child care, to education and life long learning, to heath care and
social and old age security? Financial gurus are saying: Europe can not afford
it. Women of Europe are saying: we can not afford to give it up
Joska Fisher, famous green
German politician, published two days ago an interview saying that EURO will
fall apart and EU with it if German leadership does not change its stubborn
only austerity fixated policy. I say EU will fall apart if it does not find the
way to diminish the growing gaps between the reach and the poor within every EU
member state and between EU member states. The gap between the rich and the
poor in EU like everywhere else in the world is in its biggest part the gap
between economic opportunities and access to crucial resources and political
power between women and men.
EU has been started as a
peace and reconciliation project as much as an economic project, an attempt to
insure social stability of Europe as much as to develop it into the economy of
size competitive to the other global economic players. It seems that in this
economic crises human rights, equality and solidarity based smart, sustainable
and inclusive project of EU 2020 has been tacitly replaced by a project where
some banks are too big to fail, but EU nations in serious financial crises are
not too big to fail. When EU member states are encouraged in the name of fiscal
consolidation to forget about social dialogue, to put important human rights,
and women human rights in the first place on the shelf for better times, EU is
not only in the financial and economic crises, its democracy is in crises, its
fundamental values are in crises, really as Mr. Fisher said: at has come to the
brink.
What can women in EU do, to
reverse this way to disaster?
The European Women’s Lobby
(EWL) was set up as a women’s European non-governmental organisation some more
than 2o years ago to ensure that women’s voices are heard in the policy and
decision making of the European Union as decisions made at this level impact
directly on women’s lives.
Till the eruption of
financial crises in 2008 women rights activists of EU succeeded to improve,
with a lot of advocacy and lobbying efforts and periodical downturns, the
status of women in many fields and in many ways. Violence against women became
a serious issue of EU mainstream politics, gender pay gap stopped to be tacitly
tolerated; in the decade before 2008 10 million of jobs were created, mostly
for women. But the progress in the most important issue, the issue of empowerment
of women in economic and political decision making has been slow, uneven and
never got real badly needed financial support form EU.
The financial crises hit us
when the average share of women in the parliaments and governments of EU member
states was at 23% , while our presence between CEOs and in the boards of
companies was symbolic. The progress in this field is uneven, the trends
concerning women in the Boards are negative in Slovenia, Bulgaria, Estonia,
Romania, Hungary and Cyprus, the same goes for the trends in the share of women
between CEOs of the biggest listed companies. EU average in 2012 is 3.2%, but
Malta, Czech R., Portugal, Greece, Austria and Hungary are down to 0, even if
they have already reached a share between 8.3 and 2.1 %.
The situation is getting
worse also in the share of women senior ministers – one can register serious
backlash in Hungary, Greece, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Spain. There
are only 6 countries in EU with more than 30% of women parliamentarians in the
single or lower house – Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany and from
December 2011 also Slovenia. But there are also 4 or them with a ratio below
12%: Malta, Hungary, Cyprus and Romania.
In crises times only parity
matters! Just compare what women political leaders have done in Iceland –
exactly everything what male leaders accepted to be forbidden to do in Greece!
What do we want?
As previously stated, we
should not and we will not accept going back to the past.
We
want an equal society where
women and men share rights, power and resources. We want a society where our
human needs are met and where care economy is not charity but economy
We
want parity in decision-making and the EWL will continue our 50/50 campaign for
the next European elections. We want Daphne project for parity to be able to
develop advocacy for parity at EU level and in every EU member state with less
than 40% of women in the parliament.
We want legally binding quota for European publicly listed and
non-listed companies with more than 50 employees and all state-owned companies
to have 40% of women on their boards of directors by 2015 and 50% by 2020, with
drastic sanctions for non-compliance.
We
want women to earn the same
wage as men and to re-value the sectors of the economy where women
are more concentrated, namely health, education, child care, social services,
etc.
We
want individualized rights in
relation to taxation and social security benefits. We want a pension that is
equal to men’s and enables a dignified life and prevents the feminization of
poverty as women age.
We
want a transparent and
accountable financial architecture. Total separation of deposit and
business servicing banking from the well regulated, transparent and highly
taxed risk taking banking sector.
We want ethical codes of conduct for the banking sectors and systems. These should mirror the values for which the EU stands for, namely: equality between women and men, human rights, anti-discrimination, democracy and the rule of law, which includes good governance.
We
want a European Union free of all forms of male violence against women.
We
want a sustainable world
for the future.
Above
all, we want to be heard;
this requires sufficient funding for our organisations to enable us to take
part in the shaping of the way out of crises and of the post-crisis era.
In good times, small groups
of expert feminists in mmebr states and in our headquarters in Brussels were
able to advocate, lobby and negotiate step by step progress of women human rights,
It is obvious that this will not work in the bad times. We need to develop
massive nation wide women movements in all EU member states, forming EU wide
specific issue coalitions, offering solutions based on our collective
expertise, our solidarity, our determination to reformulate the notion of
social progress, of democracy and common good. The power of women in French
revolution, in soviet revolution in post second war times, in liberation
movements of former colonies was not comparable to the power we have now. It
seems small, it seems insufficient. It has never been so many educated,
employed, globally connected, politically experienced women as we are today. It
will have to do. The challenge is enormous, but we can do it.The women from the
Spanish women lobby yesterday have put it right: If not now, when? If not us,
who?
Sonja Lokar, President of
the EWL - European Women's Lobby