WUNRN
03 March 2011
The European Women’s Lobby - EWL
FIRST EUROPEAN EQUAL PAY DAY MUST BE FOLLOWED BY CONCRETE
TARGETS & MULTIDIMENSIONAL STRATEGY: EUROPEAN WOMEN'S LOBBY
The European Women’s
Lobby (EWL) today welcomed the launch of the first ever European Equal Pay Day
that will in 2011 fall on Saturday 05 March, an initiative that already existed
in many
The EWL is calling
for concrete actions and targets to complement the information campaign on
equal pay that the Commission has been running for the last few years. ‘A
European equal pay target, to reduce the pay gap by 10 percentage points in
each country by 2020 for instance, would send Member States the message that
the EU is serious and force them to take concrete measures to bridge the gap
between women’s and men’s incomes and the consequent gender gap in pensions’,
suggests Ms. Jachanova Dolezelova.
To reach such a
target, the EU Member States would need to address the multiple and complex
root causes of the gender pay gap, such as inequalities in paid and unpaid work
and the gender segregation of the labour market. For this, women’s rights organisations
say that there are a number of important mechanisms already in place or in the
pipe-line at the EU-level, and that the EU Institutions need to demonstrate
political will in putting them to use without delay.
One such measure is
the so-called ‘Maternity Leave Directive’, the adoption of which is still
pending after the a European Parliament proposal to provide 20 weeks maternity
leave and two weeks paternity leave, both fully paid. ‘Equal pay will not
become a reality until the costs of having children are shared more equally
between parents and across society,’ says Ms. Jachanova Dolezelova. Women’s
over-representation in unpaid work and their work patterns that include
part-time and flexible work arrangements and care-related career breaks are
important factors contributing to the gender pay gap. Fully-paid care leave
that enables women to retain their economic independence while having children,
leave arrangements for men to encourage them to take up their share of care
work, and publicly provided affordable childcare facilities are key.
The EWL also warmly
welcomed Commissioner Viviane Reding’s announcement earlier this week that she
will consider legal action to get more women into boardrooms if companies do
not rapidly improve gender balance. ‘One of the major reasons behind the gender
pay gap is the serious under-representation of women in decision-making at all
levels and in all sectors’, comments Cécile Gréboval, Programme Director at the
EWL. ‘When 60% of university graduates are women and yet they predominate in
lower valued and lower paid occupations, there is clearly something wrong.’
According to the European Commission, the share of female board members in the EU has increased by just over
half a percentage point per year over the last seven years, and stands at 12%
today. At this rate, unless action is taken, it will take another 50 years
before there is a reasonable balance (40% of each sex) on company boards. ‘Self-regulation
has evidently not worked,’ concludes Ms. Gréboval. ‘We need a binding measure
at EU-level, with appropriate sanctions, to make the equal representation of
men and women in political and economic decision-making a reality.’
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For
more information, interviews, background or visual materials, please contact
Leanda Barrington-Leach, EWL Communications and Media Officer, T: (+32) 2 210
04 20, barrington@womenlobby.org,
and see www.womenlobby.org.
Note to editors:
The
European Women's Lobby
(EWL) is the largest umbrella organisation of women's associations in the
European Union (EU), working to promote women's rights and equality between
women and men. EWL membership extends to organisations in all 27 EU Member
States and the three candidate countries, as well as to 21 European-wide
organisations, representing a total of more than 2500 associations.
[1][1] The gender pay gap represents the difference between average gross hourly earnings
of male paid employees and of
female paid employees as a percentage of average gross hourly
earnings of male paid employees. The data is from 2008. Source: European Commission, Report on Equality
between Women and Men 2011.