Gender fairness needs strong commitment without playing games
Date
14 Mar 2019
Sections
Social Europe & Jobs
The Socialists and Democrats take gender equality seriously: with the nomination of Philip Lane as a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB), José Manuel Campa as chair of the European Banking Authority (EBA) and Sebastiano Laviola as number two of the Single Resolution Board (SRB), gender balance has once again not been respected. The S&D Group will therefore refuse from now on to consider any list of candidates that does not give women their rightful place.
Pervenche Berès, S&D Group spokesperson on economic and monetary affairs, said:
“At the request of the S&D Group, we discuss today in the plenary of the European Parliament the unacceptable situation of permanent disrespect of gender balance in EU top positions. Women need to be represented equally at every level of society. In our resolution, we demand that gender balance be respected in all future nominations in all EU and national institutions and bodies. We clear pledges in this direction from political groups like the Greens or GUE, who also voted on committee level in favour of the nominations. We need a strong and reliable commitment to make this better in future.”
Iratxe García-Pérez, S&D spokesperson on women's rights and gender equality, stated:
“We underline our S&D position to not take into consideration any future list of candidates unless the gender balance principle is respected, and we call on all progressive forces to support this political fight with a vote for our gender balance resolution today. We do not have a lack of qualified woman for the positions. What is missing is the political will to have a fair balance between woman and men in our society. This is in the interest of everyone as diversity brings on top of equality also better economic stability and less male bonding decisions.”