Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

It’s time for feminism at the European elections

Carmen Calvo, Helena Dalli and Franziska Giffey 23rd May 2019

As the polls open for the European Parliament elections, three gender-equality ministers and state secretaries put feminism at the top of the electoral agenda.

feminism

Carmen Calvo

The European election campaign has been in full swing. A lot is at stake—not just the composition of the European Parliament, but the soul of Europe.

Socialists and social democrats have reason to have hope. The PSOE’s recent victory in Spain, which saw the party rise to become the largest in parliament, has given us renewed drive. What’s more, we approach the European elections focused on something that was also at the heart of the PSOE’s campaign—feminism.

The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, appointed Spain’s first female majority cabinet—there are more women in government in Spain than in any other EU member state. Sanchez pushed for a feminist Spain that believes, aspires and fights for gender equality in the social, economic and political spheres. It was successful.

feminism

Helena Dalli

The Party of European Socialists’ Spitzenkandidat, Frans Timmermans—who proudly identifies as a feminist—has put the same focus on feminism at the heart of his campaign for Europe.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

While Europe has long been a frontrunner for gender equality and women’s rights, inequality remains and the progress we have made is being threatened by a resurgent populist extreme right. We must keep fighting for equality. We cannot allow any backwards steps.

Gender pay gap

A priority for a Frans Timmermans commission, and the PES and PES Women, is closing the gender pay gap. This year, February 27th was Equal Pay Day—the point when women finally caught up with men’s earnings from last year. Women had to work an extra 58 days, or 16 per cent more, to earn the same as their male colleagues. This is because today the average pay gap in the EU—the difference between the average salaries for women and men—stands at 16.2 per cent. In some member states it is as high as 22 per cent.

feminism

Franziska Giffey

Even in countries where the pay gap is lower, this often reflects the fact that few women are in the labour market, which distorts the calculation and presents a false image. In reality the gender pay gap is not just an issue of unequal pay but encompasses other inequalities in the labour market: full-time versus part-time; the amount of unpaid work men and women are expected to do; the number of women in top positions; lower-paid female dominated sectors set against higher-paid male dominated jobs. And we need to address this now, because when women fall behind it is nearly impossible to catch up: the average EU pension gap between women and men is at 37.5 per cent, putting women at higher risk of poverty in retirement.

Women deserve more—the pay gap is not acceptable.

So far, proposals have not been forthcoming at EU level. As socialists and social democrats, for years we have been calling for targets so we can monitor member-states through pay-gap audits. We must set a target to reduce the gender pay gap by 2 per cent each year, per member state and per age group. We want to introduce transparency grids to assess gender pay gaps, as introduced in Belgium in 2012. This law demands yearly reports from companies on their process and procedures for reducing the gender pay gap. Finally we want clear and dissuasive sanctions in cases of non-fulfilment of these objectives by member-states.

Universal childcare

Some progress on broader gender equality has been made. The recently adopted EU directive on work-life-balance allows every woman the right to a career, just as every man will have the right to raise children and care for dependent people. But to fully realise this, we require affordable, accessible and high-quality childcare facilities for all children from birth to schooling age, as introduced by the socialist government in Malta, which provides universal free childcare, and care services for dependent people.

This empowers women who want to enter, and stay in, the labour market. We need to ensure women’s employment situations are not precarious or forced upon them: women should be free to choose work what works for them, in equal working conditions and free of harassment and discrimination.

As Frans Timmermans has said, in the 21st century we need to provide a 21st-century labour market for all women and men. To do that, we, as ministers and state secretaries, fully support the PES common candidate and his plan to eliminate the gender-pay gap as president of the European Commission.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

He is a progressive candidate. He is a feminist candidate. And only feminism will ensure that women get more—because they deserve more, because they have the right to more.

See also our focus page “What is inequality”.

Carmen Calvo, Helena Dalli and Franziska Giffey

Carmen Calvo is the deputy prime minister and minister of the presidency, relations with the parliament and equality of Spain. Helena Dalli is the minister for European affairs and equality of Malta. Franziska Giffey is the minister for family, seniors, women and youth of Germany.

You are here: Home / Politics / It’s time for feminism at the European elections

Most Popular Posts

European civil war,iron curtain,NATO,Ukraine,Gorbachev The new European civil warGuido Montani
Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse

Most Recent Posts

EU social agenda,social investment,social protection EU social agenda beyond 2024—no time to wasteFrank Vandenbroucke
pension reform,Germany,Lindner Pension reform in Germany—a market solution?Fabian Mushövel and Nicholas Barr
European civil war,iron curtain,NATO,Ukraine,Gorbachev The new European civil warGuido Montani
artists,cultural workers Europe’s stars must shine for artists and creativesIsabelle Van de Gejuchte
transition,deindustrialisation,degradation,environment Europe’s industry and the ecological transitionCharlotte Bez and Lorenzo Feltrin

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube