A day for reflection in the Council of Ministers

It is International Women’s Day today (8 March), traditionally a time of positive stock-taking on the situation of women, with a mild admonition occasionally thrown in - something along the lines of "notwithstanding such progress, it would be positive to see more women here". On the whole that would be a fair assessment of the EU institutions.

Around a third of MEPs are women, a higher percentage than in most national parliaments and the same proportion is nearly true of the European Commission in which eight out of 27 commissioners are women - in addition to the secretary-general. But then there is the Council of Ministers: a black hole for women.

There are no political heads of directorates such as commissioners in the Council, nor are there direct elections to posts as in the European Parliament. It is more or less a pure bureaucracy, with a number of national secondments thrown in - and the highest office after secretary-general is that of director-general. It is therefore sad to report that there is only one female director-general in the Council (Directorate I: Environment) - out of a total of eight directorates, plus the legal service and the private office (cabinet). In other words, only one tenth - as opposed to a third in the other two institutions.

Unfortunately, the situation is no better lower down the hierarchy: at best the same 10% proportion exists at the head of unit level, but possibly not. Since the Council, unlike the Commission, does not seem to believe the public should have access to an organigram of the institution with names, there is little option other than to spend a lot of time with the IDEA website trying to work out who is who in the Council. This is an excellent way of becoming exposed to the wondrous multinationality of the Council through the array of names, but it is also effectively the bean-counter’s approach to understanding the gender balance in the institution - laboriously going through unit by unit and name by name, counting. I gave up half way through, but for what it’s worth I give the prize to the co-ordination ‘cell’ of DG C - Internal Market, in which all three are women. On the other hand, it is not a proper unit, so there is no head of unit - so the three still do not affect the statistics.

The balance of special appointments, in the domaine of member states, is also upsetting: while two out of four personal representatives on various issues are women, all nine of the special representa-tives to conflict areas are men. Barely a year ago this column noted this fact and the situation has not altered since. Indeed, as a number of special representatives step down in the coming months it has so far only been men rumoured to replace them.

It would be easier to dismiss the abysmal situation as a statistical fluke but for the fact that it obviously comes from the top: stunningly, the Council Secretary-General Javier Solana does not have a single woman member in his cabinet. Appar-ently he does not enjoy working with the opposite sex - but so what? A public servant, however senior, should not be allowed to indulge his preferences to such an extent. Across the road in the Commis-sion it would be unthinkable not to have at least a token woman in every cabinet, but thankfully there are a lot more.

It beggars belief that in 2007 such a situation exists. For what the gender balance in the Council suggests is that women are incapable of working on the coal-face of international policy other than in auxiliary and junior positions. But reality is somewhat different, as Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and current head of the EU presidency, well reflects. In honour of International Women’s Day she may wish to enlighten Solana on the matter - and demand a rapid gender rebalance in the Council, at every level. She may even suggest his successor be a woman.

• Ilana Bet-El is an academic, author and policy adviser based in Brussels.

It is International Women’s Day today (8 March), traditionally a time of positive stock-taking on the situation of women, with a mild admonition occasionally thrown in - something along the lines of "notwithstanding such progress, it would be positive to see more women here". On the whole that would be a fair assessment of the EU institutions.