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Women still underrepresented in European Parliament |
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Preliminary results from the European elections held on 6 June reveal that women will not be equally represented in the new European Parliament. While the exact distribution will not be known until the inaugural session in July, it appears at this time that women will make up around 35 percent of the Members of European Parliament (MEPs).
The 2004-2009 legislative body of the European Union was composed of 31 percent women and 69 percent men. Despite the existence of legislation to ensure gender equality, and promises to fulfill said legislation during the election campaigns, it seems that the constituency of women MEPs will fall far short of the full representation of the 52 percent of women in the European Union (EU).
Cécile Gréboval, Policy Director of the European Women’s Lobby (EWL), commented to EurActiv that she was not surprised by the outcome, considering the slight shift to the right in the elections. The socialist bloc suffered a big blow in the elections. EWL is the largest umbrella organization of women’s groups in the EU.
According to results published on 10 June, the number of women Members of European Parliament has increased in 13 countries, declined in seven and remained the same in two. The results for three of the 27 Member States is still unknown.
So far, Finland and Sweden are the only two countries with a higher representation of women parliamentarians than men, with 62 percent in Finland and 56 percent in Sweden. Malta, on the other hand, has a 100 percent male representation in the parliament, followed by the Czech Republic with a male representation of 82 percent.
According to Cécile Gréboval, more right leaning MEPs will mean less willingness to adopt progressive legislation, as for example, a law on maternity leave which failed to pass in May and was sent back to the Women´s Rights Commission of the EU Assembly for review.
Among the women elected for the European Parliament are some well known politicians, as well as daughters and wives of famous male politicians; for example, controversial Rachida Dati, one of France’s highest profile female politicians, current commissioners Danuta Hübner, Meglena Kuneva and Viviane Reding, as well as Anna Maria Corazza, the wife of Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt.
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