EWL alternative report on EU implementation of Beijing+10

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report focuses on reviewing the progress made by the European Union institutions in implementing the 12 areas of concern of the Beijing Platform for Action since 1995. Major changes have taken place at the global level as well as within the European Union during the reporting period which had an impact on European policies on equality between women and men. Those changes sometimes bring hope for women’s rights, but they also represent challenges and the Beijing+10 review process provides the opportunity to address these challenges.

A. Global context

After two decades of action by women’s non governmental organisations and several United Nations Conferences dedicated to issues linked to women’s rights, the adoption at the Fourth World Conference in 1995 of the Beijing Platform for Action was a major milestone in the fight for the achievement of equality between women and men globally. Since Beijing, some real progress has been made in the European Union at the legislative level; the position of women in decision-making has improved and thanks to the action of women’s NGOs, there has been a growing awareness about questions related to violence against women.

However other developments in the last decade have at the same time started to slow down progress towards gender equality. The EU has adopted an economic policy that stresses market liberalisation, privatisation and competition, which does not include, nor measure through impact analysis, policy goals from the social agenda. In fact during this period there has been a widespread reduction of funding for public services and such cuts disproportionately disadvantage women. Yet, at the same time, it is clear that the EU needs to implement its stated commitment to achieve coherence between economic and social policy goals. The lack of coherence has led to a greater feminisation of poverty in Europe, less job security and a weakening of the European social model of social protection and public services. The global trend towards and the wide spread support for neo liberal economic policies, have also limited the scope for action both for individual Member States and the EU itself to put a stronger focus on the concrete enjoyment of fundamental rights, in particular social rights and women’s rights. Another worrying trend highlighted by this report is the negative influence of very conservative forces and religious fundamentalism, in particular in relation to women’s sexual and reproductive rights.

B. The enlargement of the European Union and women’s rights

The enlargement of the European Union first to 15 Member States with the entry of Sweden and Finland in 1995 and the accession of 10 new countries from Eastern and Central Europe in 2004 has had a significant impact on the structures and policies of the EU, including gender equality. Equality policies in the EU were strengthened by the combined effect of the membership of Nordic countries and the outcome of the Beijing Conference. The enlargement of the EU to Central and Eastern European countries is a major turning point. The legitimate expectation of many women in these countries was that EU membership and the transposition of EU gender equality laws would contribute to greater gender equality and provide women with new opportunities. However, while the transposition of European gender equality provisions in all EU Member States is positive, the economic reforms and market liberalisation carried out during the time of transition along with the economic reforms required by the EU as a precondition for accession, have had direct negative impacts on women’s lives: their situation in the labour market has become more insecure, there has been a scaling down of public services to support the care of children and other dependents and trafficking in women for the purpose of sexual exploitation has increased.

C. Significant progress on gender equality in the European Treaty

The most significant progress in relation to equality of women and men in the EU has been the integration of the right to equality between women and men into the foundations and objectives of the Community legal order through the Amsterdam Treaty in 1999. The Treaty also gives the mandate to the Community to “eliminate inequalities and to promote the equality of women and men” in all its activities. This has led to a new approach to equality between women and men in the EU institutions combining specific mechanisms and policies for gender equality and the integration of a gender perspective in all areas (gender mainstreaming). This dual approach stems from the Beijing Platform for Action and the European Union was also instrumental in encouraging Member States to follow the same policy framework. This positive development was accompanied by the creation of different institutional mechanisms in charge of gender equality or gender mainstreaming.

D. A question of competence

The European Union can act only where it has legal competence to do so. In relation to equality between women and men, the EU has a competence to act on gender equality in employment, and a number of European directives relating to this area have been adopted since 1975. Member States are required to transpose EU directives. Therefore, there has been some progress at national level - a positive effect of the European integration for women, even if the concrete implementation of those measures is still to be improved.

Since 2000 the EU Member States have also started to co-ordinate their actions in other areas with strong gender implications such as employment and social inclusion. In other areas, the EU has a weaker competence but can still play a role in initiating programmes and giving incentives in relation to implementation of the European commitment to gender equality, such as in the areas public health, social protection etc.

E. Mixed results in relation to gender mainstreaming

While we found that the commitment to gender mainstreaming was repeated in many of the most important EU policy documents, it also appears that in terms of gender impact assessment, nothing very systematic was carried out or that gender was merely quoted as an issue but not properly integrated into policy measures. In the area of development policies for example, the EU’s gender mainstreaming policy has had little impact on promoting women’s empowerment, transforming gender roles and responsibilities, ending gender inequality, or involving women and men as agents of change. In 2004 a number of initiatives were under way as part of the implementation of the budget line “Promoting Gender equality in development co-operation” which may well lead to an improvement in gender mainstreaming in the day to day work of Commission officials.

In general, too little attention was paid to the transformative nature of gender mainstreaming. It is also difficult to judge the implementation of this strategy at national level due to the absence of systematic gender impact assessment. The success of any gender mainstreaming strategy depends very much on political will and on the commitment of individual decision-makers and officials. The very good work carried out by the Women and Science Unit in the European Commission is a good example of success, while in contrast we find very limited progress in relation to integrating gender issues in other policy areas, such as trade policy, the environment and sustainable development for example. In all gender mainstreaming policies and initiatives, it is important to have less illusive language and more concrete timeframes, budgets, objectives and monitoring tools in place.

F. The lack of a gender perspective in European economic policies

The report shows that gender is not taken into account in macro level European economic policies, although the Lisbon Strategy affirmed the necessity to increase the employment rate of women and to take into account the needs in relation to childcare as a precondition for growth. Strategies to promote economic growth are introduced with no gender sensitive analysis of the different impact that policies may have on the lives of women and men. But the relationship between economic policies and gender inequality demonstrates the importance of gender mainstreaming. Evidence suggests that pre-dominant macro-economic policies are associated with an increase in the gender segregation of labour, destabilisation of women’s employment through sub-contracting, increases in the gender pay gap, reductions in women’s access to health and education due to the privatisation of State services, increased inequality in access to credit, land and property, and deepening of the feminisation of poverty.

The need for coherence between macro-economic and gender mainstreaming policies is not sufficiently acknowledged and therefore the EU fails to recognise the contradiction between promoting gender equality on the one hand and perpetuating or even increasing gender inequalities through macro-economic policies on the other hand.

G. Economic and social rights of women: the need to strengthen and reform the European social model

Little has changed in the situation of women in the EU since 1995. Women’s employment rate has only slightly improved and the gender pay gap has only marginally decreased. In the new EU Member States the situation varies greatly between countries. However the report shows that women’s unemployment rates have increased during the transition process in Central and Eastern Europe, and that discrimination against women in the labour market is not sufficiently addressed. Although the EU has recognised through the directives on parental leave and part time work the importance of reconciling family and working life for women and men, a lot remains to be done in order to change the gendered division of tasks towards a sharing of domestic and care work, which has not changed at all. Evidence shows that there is a positive relationship between women’s participation in paid work and the public expenditure allocated to social benefits linked to the care of children and other dependents, however there is a serious under-provision of care services for children and dependant persons in most EU countries.

One of the conclusions of this Report is that social protection, pensions and tax systems in the EU must be reformed so that they respond more adequately to gender equality requirement and to women’s needs in terms of increasing women’s participation in the labour market and ensuring adequate support for new family structures notably single parent families. Unfortunately, social policies, which are an integral part of the European model, tend to become weaker and are, for the most part, built upon the male “bread winner” model. It is urgent to promote reforms that include the gender equality demands and a gender equality perspective, taking into account the necessary conciliation of family and working life for women and men, in the context of the European strategy to modernise social protection. The objective is to facilitate women’s access to paid work and their equal access to social benefits, including through the individualisation of rights.

H. Inadequate implementation of legislative measures

In some areas, the report concludes that the European legislative framework is more or less in place, but there’s a real failure of implementation, which takes women’s rights into account. For example, policies in relation to human rights very often fail to protect women’s rights as recognised by both European and international texts, such as the right to health or the right not to be subjected to violence. In the same way, some texts exist in relation to the protection of gender equality in the content of the media, but they are not implemented properly. The same goes for the existing European legislation on equal pay in employment for example.

I. The absence of European policies in some areas

Despite a strong commitment to gender equality and strong Treaty provision, the European Union has failed to take measures in some very important domains such as women in decision-making and the fight against violence against women. In relation to the representation of women in the institutions of the EU, while figures are slowly improving, decision-makers have refused to take any binding measure to improve the situation. There were examples of a very low representation of women in important European nominated bodies during the reporting period. Moreover, while some positive actions were taken in relation to violence against women, these lack the necessary vision and clear political commitment to address and eradicate male violence against women in the long term. A European legislative framework is absolutely and urgently needed in this area.

J. Developments and challenges as of the summer 2004

While the report shows notable progress since 1995, actions are still urgently needed in order to ensure a satisfying pace of progress, without which the realisation of equality between women and men will lose ground. Some recent developments seem to indicate already that progress might slow down in relation to policies for equality between women and men. Firstly, the current European Community Framework Strategy on Gender Equality and attached programme are coming to an end in 2005 and we need to affirm now that gender equality will not progress without a new strategy. Such a strategy provides the political, policy and legislative framework for all EU actions in relation to gender equality, including gender mainstreaming. The European Commission has integrated the gender equality funding programme in a larger draft social programme called PROGRESS from 2007. In order to comply with Treaty provisions, mechanisms have to be put in place to ensure the visibility of the programme for women and to facilitate access to it for women’s NGOs.

Another recent development is the decision of the EU Council to create a European Gender Institute. Such an institute would act as a source of expertise and would increase the opportunities for sharing knowledge, data and information on best practices across the 25 Member States of the EU – as well as putting forward recommendations on EU policy and providing effective tools for gender mainstreaming. This Institute should not be created at the expense of other gender equality bodies or of the existing institutional mechanisms, as this would clearly represent a step backwards. The Institute should also be provided with sufficient funding to be able to fulfil its role effectively. Finally, the involvement of women’s NGOs is essential to the work of the Institute and should be ensured.

In terms of legislation, as of September 2004, the European institutions were in the process of adopting two new European directives on gender equality. One relates to equality between women and men in relation to goods and services. The agreement reached on this text by Member States in October 2004 brings some progress, but it is not satisfactory concerning the main problematic issue in this text, that is the use of actuarial factors broken down by sex in the calculation of insurance premiums. The exceptions to the gender equality principle permitted for insurances will allow for a continuation of discrimination against women for some insurance products, which will have to be closely monitored by the Commission and by women’s NGOs.

The other directive that should be adopted soon is a codification of five previous directives on equality between women and men in employment. At the same time, it is clear that women across Europe expect to see further EU gender equality legislation coming forward in the very near future.

Source: European Women’s Lobby