Vrouwelijke politici, de actie van de media en de EU ten aanzien van gelijkheid (en)

At a seminar on Women Politicians and the Media on 7 March, MEPs and journalists discussed different aspects of gender equality and diversity. The place of women in positions of leadership, in both politics and the media, was the main focus of the debate.

A round table between MEPs and journalists was chaired by Adriana Cerretelli, a journalist on the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, who described women politicians as a "rare species".  There are only 11 female heads of state or government in the world and even in Europe the figures are unimpressive. In the EP, 236 of 785 Members are women but in Europe's national parliaments the situation is generally worse: Sweden ranks second in the world (behind Rwanda) for the proportion of women members but Italy lies in 62nd position and France 86th.

Women in politics

Parliament Vice-President Rodi Kratsa (EPP-ED, GR) described her own experience.  While some female politicians had come to the European cause via women's issues, she had come to women's issues through her commitment to Europe, especially to a "social Europe".  She believed that "the emergence of women in politics owes a lot to the feminist movement".  

According to the co-chair of the Greens/EFA group, Italian MEP Monica Frassoni, "one of the weaknesses of women today is that they are unaware of suffering discrimination in political life." Quotas should therefore be introduced to ensure faire representation of women among political decision-makers. The only man on the panel, Ra?l Romeva Rueda (Greens/EFA, ES), endorsed this view but warned against a purely quantitative approach saying it was important to focus more on "feminising politics". This implies a new vision of society in which the redistribution of roles between men and women goes beyond the world of political activity.

Generally it is men who decide the professional position of women because they hold the posts with responsibilities, stressed Lilli Gruber (PES, IT), a journalist and MEP. She was in favour of gender-based quotas for appointments to management positions. Manuela Gretkowska, who set up the Women's Party in Poland five months ago with the aim of changing society in a way outside the traditional ideological clichés, told the meeting of her own personal political experience. "We are trapped between two extremes", she said, "the committed feminists treat me as a conservative catholic but on the right I hear that I'm a baby-killer".

Women politicians in the media

"When they speak of women, they tend to speak of their life outside politics" more than they do with male politicians, was Rodi Kratsa's comment on the media. Monica Frassoni believed that if the image of women had deteriorated in the media in some countries, such as Italy, this was partly due to the failure of women to protest.  At any rate, this is part of the problem although, as was emphasised by Anna Záborská (EPP-ED, SK), chair of the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, advertising has also done much to instrumentalise women. She also criticised the fact that journalists "trivialise the commitment of women in politics".

Susan von Lojewski, a journalist at the German TV station ZDF, argued that women in the media are rarely given responsibility for "serious" topics such as defence or finance. They themselves often choose "softer" areas. According to Manuela Gretkowska, "despite support in opinion polls which is greater than that given by voters to two Polish parties represented today in the European Parliament, any information on us is turned into a joke".