RIGHTS-EU: Another Step Towards Gender Equality in Parliament

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Apr 3 2001 (IPS) - The European Union is moving towards making it obligatory for lists of candidates to the European Parliament to contain the same number of women as men, said Paloma Saavedra, coordinator of the European Women’s Lobby.

Saavedra told IPS Monday that a stride forward regarding gender equality was taken over the weekend at a meeting in the Spanish city of Gijón, 400 kms north of Madrid, where a document drafted by six experts in constitutional law was approved for presentation to the European Parliament.

The European Women’s Lobby is a federation of women’s groups from the EU’s 15 member countries, which is also active in the rest of the countries on the continent.

The gathering in Gijón, which was attended by EU parliamentarians like Elena Valenciano and Manuel Medina from Spain, and Mónica Frassoni from Italy, underlined that “parity democracy should be included as a structural principle of the new electoral system.”

The document recalls that in each country, deputies to the European Parliament are to be elected through a system of proportional representation.

On the list of candidates in a system of parity democracy, the names of women and men must be alternated, and the gender of each candidate should be clearly indicated on each ballot, it adds.

The text, which was approved by consensus, states that it will be mainly the responsibility of the leaders of political parties and electoral coalitions to enforce the objectives of parity democracy.

Saavedra told IPS that the option for a regime of proportional representation was chosen because it has been found to be the best system for guaranteeing the presence of women in parliamentary bodies.

She added that “gender parity in European elections would have an immediate multiplying effect on electoral laws and on national and local elections in all EU countries.”

According to EU treaties, if the proposal prospers in the European Parliament, the member countries will have to bring their electoral legislation and even their constitutions into line.

The document approved in Gijón stresses that women’s low level of representation in EU decision-making bodies implies a flaw that is incompatible with real democracy.

Participants noted that the European Parliament had already pronounced itself on the issue. They cited a document approved by the European Parliament on Jul 15, 1998, which stipulates that the aim of parity between men and women should be taken into account when lists are drawn up for elections, and that it is up to the political parties first and foremost to translate that objective into reality.

The 1998 document also urged that gender balance be respected in all policies and commissions, whether at the level of the EU or at the national and international level, with no less than 40 percent participation by either gender.

The Gijón meeting also cited the Sep 2-4, 1998 European Regional Colloquium organised in Strasbourg to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Among the issues discussed at that gathering was the question of women’s participation in political life, and participants stressed the need for states to adopt affirmative action measures in order to bring about gender parity, especially in public posts.

The European Regional Colloquium held that affirmative action measures constituted the only instrument for remedying inequalities. It underlined, however, that they must always be adopted as provisional measures, and must never be based on the concept that there are biological differences between the sexes.

The Gijón document staunchly rejects the idea that measures designed to bring about a greater female presence in parliament through elections could distort the concept of representative democracy.

Such arguments are false, because in the complex societies of today, representation is articulated by taking into account the different interests of individuals and groups of which men and women form part, argues the document.

Hence, in drawing up electoral lists, many criteria are taken into account, including territorial questions, “political families” within parties, “quotas” for trade unions and other factors that have an influence on the necessary “balance.”

That means representation is not untouched by conflicts of interests, states the text.

There is unanimous agreement that the more interests at play, and the better represented all of the interests on the electoral lists and among the ranks of those elected, the greater the legitimacy of the resultant parliament and, in consequence, decision-making, the Gijón document adds.