EU – The European Parliament Challenge for Gender Equality
Извор: WUNRN – 09.12.2019
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
Article 19, Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)
August 5, 2019 – The EU has adopted legislation, issues recommendations, exchanges and good practices and provides funding to support action by member states. The concepts of EU gender equality policy were shaped by European Court of Justice rulings. The European Parliament regularly adopts own initiative reports on gender issues, calling for more efforts to improve gender equality.
The European Parliament has always been very active on achieving equality between men and women and has a standing committee dedicated to women’s rights and gender equality. Every year, Parliament marks International Women’s Day on 8 March and raises awareness by organising events.
Gender equality at work
In 2019, the EU approved new rules on family and care-related leave and more adaptable working conditions, to create more incentives for fathers to take family-related leave and to increase women’s employment rate.
EU legislation on gender equality in the work place:
- *Rules on employment (incl. equal pay, social security, working conditions and harassment)
- *Rules on self-employment
- *Rights to maternity, paternity and parental leave
Parliament also calls for concrete measures to narrow the gender pay gap – the difference between what men and woman are paid for the same work – which in the EU was an average of 16% in 2017 and the pension gap – the difference in pension income that men and women get – which stood at 35.7% in 2017. It also called for measures to tackle female poverty, as women are more likely to live in poverty than men.
