Europese Commissie wil meer kansen aan vrouwen geven binnen de organisatie (en)
What is the basis for the Commission's equal opportunities policy?
The foundations were laid by the succeeding treaties and secondary legislation. The principle of equal pay for women and men was laid down in Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome and expanded in the 1970s by the adoption of specific directives. In 1992, the principle of gender mainstreaming was enshrined in the EC Treaty, stipulating that the principle of equal treatment should not prevent the maintenance or adoption of measures providing for specific advantages in favour of the under-represented sex (Article 141). The principle of equality between women and men is also confirmed in Article II-83 of Title III of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
These provisions made it possible for an equal opportunities policy to be implemented in the European civil service. The new Staff Regulations of officials of the European Communities, which came into force on 1 May 2004, explicitly prohibit discrimination based on gender (or on other grounds), while also making provision for measures and actions promoting equal opportunities to be taken into account in the areas covered by the Staff Regulations (Article 1d).
What is the Commission's policy?
The equal opportunities policy for female and male members of staff has been in place since 1988. Its first two Action Programmes were positive action programmes for women. Since 1997, the programmes contain measures that go beyond simple "catch-up" measures for the under-represented sex. The 4th Action Programme was adopted on 28 April 2004 (SEC(2004)447/5) and covers the period 2004-08. Since 1995, the Commission has also set annual targets for the recruitment and appointment of women to category A posts with the aim of eventually reaching gender parity. The targets for senior management, middle management and non-management administrator posts are subject to annual monitoring. Lastly, the Commission has organised every year since 1997 an awareness-raising programme for staff on the occasion of International Women's Day.
What are the provisions of the European Commission's 4th Action Programme for equal opportunities for women and men?
The 4th Programme aims to improve the gender balance within the staff, ensure consistency in the approach adopted across the different departments of the Commission and remove barriers to the career development of women. Overall, the aim is to accelerate the rate of progress achieved in 2000-04. The targets can be broken down into several types of measures:
- to remove barriers to the career development of women in recruitment, training and their career paths;
- to reconcile personal and working life;
- to carry out a comparative study on the career profiles of men and women;
- to raise awareness on issues of gender equality;
- to protect the dignity of the person in the workplace.
As the evaluation of the previous programme showed that a variety of difficulties remain in spite of the progress achieved, the 4th Action Programme places the emphasis on quantifiable measures that can be compared from DG to DG and monitored on a regular basis. An annual report will assess departments' implementation of the programme. The report adopted by the Commission on 16 November is the first of these reports.
What are the best practical steps that have been taken by the Commission in terms of gender equality?
Concerning the removal of barriers to the career development of women, several DGs are setting up specific coaching programmes, while others intend to give priority to women when there are male and female candidates of equal merit for appointment or promotion and to ensure that promotion lists contain a number of women that is proportional to the number of women eligible for promotion.
On the issue of reconciling personal and working life, several DGs have adopted a code of good conduct or recommendations on scheduling meetings and training sessions, or on working hours in general. Some DGs ensure that staff on maternity leave, parental leave or working part-time are replaced on a systematic and priority basis.
A variety of actions have been taken to address awareness and training: these include specific information sessions, targeted internal training, a page devoted to equal opportunities on the DGs' intranet site, staff questionnaires and the dissemination of good practice. However, the actions have a greater impact when they are targeted, when they concern issues that affect all staff and when management takes an active role.
What are the targets for the recruitment and appointment of women to management posts and other A*/AD posts?
In 2004, the Commission set itself three targets:
- to appoint seven women at Director-General, Assistant Director-General and Director level: only five women were appointed;
- to appoint women to 27% of middle management posts: women were appointed to only 23% of middle management posts, although it should be noted that just 17% of candidates were women;
- to recruit as many women as men at A*/AD level: women were recruited to 44% of A*/AD posts, although this was an improvement on the 2003 figure of 33%, especially as women accounted for approximately 30% only of successful candidates on the reserve lists.
For 2005, the Commission has confirmed its commitment to these targets. The 2005 targets have therefore been set at 20% of recruitments and appointments for senior management posts, 30% for middle management posts and 50% of non-management A*/AD recruitments, as far as the composition of the reserve lists allows. These percentages apply for first appointments and first recruitments.
What are the results of the implementation of the Commission's equal opportunities policy?
The policies implemented since the end of the 1980s have had a positive impact on the representation of women in category A*, and more particularly in management posts. The presence of women in category A* rose from 5.2% in 1970 to 24% in 2003. Although admittedly slow, growth accelerated during the 1990s, increasing by 8.7% from 1990 to 2000. During the same period, the appointment of women to management posts also became more marked. Whereas in 1994 women accounted for just 2% of senior management posts, ten years later their proportion had reached 11.5%. Moreover, greater attention has been given to applying the equal opportunities policy to selection procedures (analysis of the different impact of competitions on women and men), to training, and to measures to better reconcile personal and working life.
How is the equal opportunities policy actually put into practice in the Commission departments?
The Equal Opportunities and Non-discrimination unit of the Directorate-General for Administration is specifically in charge of drawing up and monitoring this policy. The unit has a coordinating, advisory, monitoring and evaluation role in relation to the Directorates-General. However, it is the DGs and services that have the chief responsibility for implementing the 4th Action Programme through an "equality correspondent" (a person appointed within each DG to be responsible for follow-up), an Action Plan and an Equal Opportunities Group.
The departments' progress in terms of equal opportunities is evaluated using several instruments: gender equality scoreboards, an annual report that "includes an evaluation of the overall implementation of the programme based on the reports of the DGs and services, and compiling a ranking of the best performing DGs", and in the future, the inclusion in the DGs' Annual Management Plans and Annual Reports of an item on gender equality.
What are the main obstacles and challengers still faced by the Commission in this field?
The main obstacles include:
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-the slow change in mentalities;
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-a larger workload and more generally a culture of longer working hours;
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-the fact that the issue is still a low priority for many departments;
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-limited human and financial resources due to the difficult budgetary situation;
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-insufficient attention paid systematically to the gender dimension of all aspects of human resources