Ahead of tomorrow's International Women's Day, GUE/NGL MEPs have stressed the nefarious impact of austerity policy on women's rights and called for an end to damaging cuts and privatisations. 

 

"The austerity measures being pushed by EU leaders have had particularly acute consequences for women, presenting major obstacles to efforts to advance gender equality across Europe. We utterly reject the arguments being advanced for ever further austerity," said Swedish MEP and Chair of the Women's Rights and Gender Equality Committee, Mikael Gustafsson. 

 

Portuguese MEP Inês Zuber emphasised that "most people living in poverty are women, and women’s employment circumstances are ever more precarious."
She contined: "As the current austerity drive emphasises robbing workers of their hard-won rights, today we are emphasising the need to bring to an end the economic and social madness being advocated by austerity-obsessed politicians."   

 

"Tied to the bad policy-making problem is the gloomy reality of extreme gender imbalance in both EU and national decision-making systems. Social and gender equality go hand-in-hand so alternative economic policies and solidarity are needed in order to achieve economic recovery, gender justice, fair wealth redistribution, and quality public services," said Dutch MEP Kartika Liotard. 

 

German MEP Cornelia Ernst insisted that "women, young people, workers, pensioners, the unemployed, and the socially excluded must not pay for the crisis through massive budget cutbacks and the privatisation of public services."
"The super rich and the financial sector must pay for much-needed public investment in job creation," she added.