Plan to promote a better deal for women at work

Date: 10/09/1998

By Rory Watson

MEPS will next week accuse governments of failing to live up to their high-minded promises to give women a better chance of finding work.

In a bid to flesh out the political pledges to encourage female employment, Italian Socialist MEP Elena Marinucci is proposing a wide-ranging package of measures to overcome the obstacles now facing women as they look for work. The proposals, which have already been unanimously endorsed by her colleagues on the women's rights committee, will now be examined by the full Parliament next Thursday (17 September).

Despite a series of prominent equal opportunity commitments over the past four years, unemployment levels among women are consistently higher in every EU country except the UK and Sweden.

The women's rights committee believes that the discrepancies could be even more pronounced than the official data suggest since they do not cover part-time, voluntary, unpaid and family workers, the overwhelmingly majority of whom are women.

Marinucci's proposals call on governments to lay down “ambitious bench-mark targets with quantified objectives and clear timetables and budgetary resources” in the next set of employment guidelines they submit to the European Commission.

These would cover measurable goals for female participation in the labour market, access to training, child-care, rates of pay and the distribution of part-time work between men and women.

A former chairwoman of Italy's committee on equality between men and women, Marinucci is keen to see the Commission draft child-care legislation which would guarantee a basic minimum of affordable, high-quality care in the EU.

The challenge of easing women into the jobs market is also examined in a report by Italian Christian Democrat MEP Maria Paola Colombo Svevo on the contribution which cooperative societies, mutuals and non-profit-making associations can make.

She argues that these social enterprises help to integrate women into employment, can be used to teach them new skills and can more easily provide opportunities for women trying to balance the demands of work and family life.

The MEP maintains that governments should offer financial and fiscal incentives, such as lower value added tax and easier access to loans, for labour-intensive social enterprises. She recommends that the Commission should produce a White Paper indicating how such businesses could become an integral part of its wider employment strategy.

The third in the trio of women's reports being presented to MEPs examines the plight of single parents, of whom 80-90&percent; are female. With the number of one-parent families on the increase and member states looking to cut their social security budgets, the document's author, Spanish Socialist MEP Ludivina García Arias, insists that improving the lot of lone parents bringing up children on their own must take priority over budget deficit considerations.