How can we set Europe’s women free?

Two MEPs discuss the future of European women's policy

Women are defeated by the very rules and regulation designed to protect their interests in the workplace, says Godfrey Bloom

I think one of the most awkward questions I have been asked since I took my seat as a substitute member of the women's committee is "What is it for?"

I have to respond that I am not really sure. In point of fact I sometimes think it does active harm. I have lived and worked in the UK for most of my professional life, notwithstanding a short spell in the Far East, so any perspective must therefore be derived from experience in the 'Anglo-Saxon' economy. I may add, after quite carefully going through the MEPs' handbook, I seem to be one of the very few deputies with serious commercial or military experience.

This is part of the problem. The European Commission churns out new directives like chocolates in a sweetie factory and the Parliament endorses most of them through commercial ignorance. Especially in the field of small businesses.

My political opponents, often supported by British public service broadcasting, try to give the impression that somehow I do not think women should work. Or they should be second-class citizens. I believe, and have always believed, as the chairman of an international investment company, albeit a small one, that businesses need more women, not fewer, and working practices should be flexible. My company has pioneered this approach for many years.

But the law of unintended consequence means the more employment legislation enacted the opposite the effect. Let me list some examples in the field of current and proposed legislation. The first and most obvious is maternity leave. We have at the moment the absurd situation where a female applicant does not have to say if she is pregnant at an interview, whether she intends to get pregnant or indeed, if she becomes pregnant, whether she intends to return to work.

The employment legislation is so heavily stacked against the employer that small companies have simply stopped employing young women. The small employer just claims he wants someone with more experience and employs a woman whose children have grown up.

I have been involved with women's sport at Cambridge University for ten years. Almost none of these bright young women joins small businesses. They all go to big businesses which can cope better with the legislation.

This is a direct result of having the same rules for global bank HSBC as for a small music publishing business with 12 people.

Last year when a female pilot had been on maternity leave, she had not met the BA flying hours requirement to fly part-time. An industrial tribunal overruled BA and she is now flying, subject to appeal. The women's committee cheered. Yet what is the outcome for hundreds of career female commercial pilots? They now have passengers aboard who are thinking "is she competent? Or did she work the system?" This sets back women in the field of commercial flying.

Look at the lunatic Norwegian system of compulsory women in the boardroom. 40%! If I go to Norway (and I do) to negotiate a shipping contract I now do not know if the female director to whom I am talking is competent or a 'token woman'. This is wicked and patronising and, I can assure everyone, deeply resented by the business career woman.

More than 50% of all new businesses in the UK last year were started by women. My post-bag is one of the biggest in the country on the matter of employment legislation, over half from women. They all agree with me.

Yet maybe there is a role for a women's committee. A radical, revisionist role. They could lobby for the rolling back of stifling over-protective legislation in the field of women's employment: a European campaign to make it easier to employ women to throw off the shackles. But perhaps part of the problem is that most women's-issue junkies, male and female, deep down think women cannot hack it on their own. They somehow need the protection of pedantic politicians, journalists and broadcasters (none of whom ever has commercial experience). This indeed is the most intellectually dishonest sort of discrimination and it is rife, not in business, but in the hearts of the chattering classes.

Women do not need special help over men; have faith in them, I do.

• UK Independence/Democracy Group MEP Godfrey Bloom represents the on the Parliament's internal market and consumer protection committee and is a substitute member of the women's rights and gender equality committee.

Women across the world are treated as second-class citizens. Political priorities must be changed to redress the balance, says Livia Jaroka

Most people living in poverty are women. In recent years that disproportion has worsened. The reasons are painfully familiar. Even in 2006, women everywhere in the world are systematically paid less than men. On most of the planet they face discrimination, lack of employment opportunities, inadequate or absent social services, find it difficult or impossible to obtain credit or the right to own land and are excluded from decision-making processes.

Above all they are routinely denied the same access to education as men and forced into traditional gender roles. Millions of women are condemned to poverty, as are their daughters, and once poor they are vulnerable to disease, violence and sexual exploitation - and the cycle continues through the generations. It may not be the most fashionable issue of the moment, but it is with us and will not go away.

Roma women are confronted by these problems in often extreme form, not only because of their gender, but because of ethnic discrimination. As a result they are among the poorest in Europe. Widespread anti-Gypsy stereotypes help to explain the large gap between their level of education and the average.

Compared both to other girls and Romani boys, Romani girls are more likely to drop out of school early. This is due to the prevalence of traditional views of gender roles and very early marriage. The frequent segregation of Romani girls in schools also helps to perpetuate such practices.

Without equal education, Romani women are unable to compete effectively on the labour market and as a result their unemployment rate is much higher than the EU average - this holds for all member states. Roma unemployment in the Czech Republic is estimated at 45-50% and for Roma women it is even higher. Without access to education or employment they are often exposed to unsanitary and even dangerous living conditions, sometimes living in Bantustans outside cities, separated from other communities. They can also be vulnerable to gross abuses of their human rights and dignity, such as coercive sterilisation and forced prostitution.

With equal access to economic, social, and political opportunities, Romani women could be factors for the kind of economic growth everyone wants. The same is true for women in general. And, given Europe's 'missing generation' and the disastrous demographic prospects, it makes sense, at long last, to help such marginalised groups and include them in society, including the economy. Women, in that sense, represent one huge marginalised group, a great, largely wasted potential in society. And in contrast to the rest of Europe's ageing population, the Roma are young.

It makes sense for the European Parliament to take proactive steps to promote consistent and continuous inclusion of women in all aspects of society. A real show of political will is needed, not just from the (itself somewhat marginalised) committee on women's rights and gender equality and the committee on employment and social affairs. The human rights committee can and ought to take up issues like trafficking of women and coercive sterilisation. Other committees need to pay more attention to the implications of the millions of impoverished women looking after the family home, but often ignorant of health issues which closely concern them.

It is a question of looking at politics, and in Parliament all reports, in a different way and changing priorities. The millions of women in poverty should reasonably be at or near the top. The result may be that we start to see connections and ways of shaping public policy - in agriculture for instance - which will start to alleviate the scandal of hunger and deprivation in 21st century Europe. I do not pretend there are instant solutions. But there are plainly changes of direction and policy which would, fairly quickly, make a difference.

At the very least, the European Parliament could help focus attention on these issues with regular public hearings and generate public dialogue. It should support, and where necessary, push the European Commission and the Council of Ministers in the right direction. Eradicating poverty is not just a friendly act of solidarity. It is an obligation, a necessity for Europe. Parliament needs to be part of the impetus for change.

• Hungarian centre-right MEP Livia Jaroka is a member of the Parliament's committee on women's rights and gender equality and of the committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs.

Two MEPs discuss the future of European women's policy.
Article is part of European Voice Special Report, 'The EU and women'.

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