MEP calls for tough line on equality law

Date: 08/02/1996

By Fiona McHugh

ITALIAN Christian Democrat MEP Maria Colombo Svevo is challenging the EU to do more to ensure that women get paid as much as their male colleagues for doing the same job.

Despite the fact that an equal pay principle is enshrined in the EU's founding treaty and laws designed to combat sex discrimination have been in force for two decades, there are still glaring income differences between the sexes, with women sometimes earning 45&percent; less than their male counterparts.

To redress this imbalance, Svevo will tell fellow MEPs next week that the EU must take a tougher line, tightening existing equality laws at the Intergovernmental Conference and clamping down on companies which break them.

Svevo wants the European Commission to help women who have been unfairly treated to go to court and says it should carry out a comparative study of wages across the Union.

Transparent wage structures should be introduced to allow law-enforcers to identify discrimination on the grounds of sex, claims the Italian MEP in a resolution to be voted on in Strasbourg on Tuesday (13 February).

“The need for further detailed data, giving a transparent and comparable picture of employment and its variables, is evident,” says Svevo.

In a move likely to stir fresh controversy, she calls on the Commission to draft new laws to legalise positive action, which is aimed at improving the lot of working women.

That issue hit the headlines late last year, after the European Court of Justice ruled that positive action was illegal, prompting an outcry from women's organisations and Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn.

Svevo also expresses grave concern in the resolution over cuts in child care in a number of member states, but falls short of demanding action on this front.

At a glance, figures on women in the European workplace look encouraging. For example, the number of working women has steadily increased over the past 20 years. Women accounted for almost 40&percent; of the workforce in 1992, compared to 30&percent; in 1960. But the figures also show that the majority of working women are in part-time, insecure jobs which tend to be relatively badly paid.