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  • 24-01-2021 16:32

CORRECTION EU/Presidency: Covid-19 impact on women dominates equality agenda


(CORRECTS THE DATE IN THE 13TH PARAGRAPH FROM 16 APRIL TO 6 APRIL).

 

Lisbon, Jan. 24, 2021 (Lusa) - The Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union has asked for a study on the impact of Covid-19 on women and wants the conclusions to serve as a basis for political and economic decisions to recover from the crisis.

"There are no gender-neutral crises, and this certainly is not the case. We already know that there are many differences in the impacts between men and women," said the Chair of the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality (IGC), in an interview with Lusa.

This impact is visible in unemployment, in the reconciliation of personal, family and professional life and in the "risks" of working from home (WFH), said Sandra Ribeiro, anticipating the debate that should dominate the meeting of the High-Level Group on Gender Mainstreaming scheduled for Monday and Tuesday under the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The meeting of this technical group, which supports the European Commission and serves as a network for sharing what is going on in each Member State and as a link between different presidencies of the Council of the EU, will be the moment when Portugal speaks of its priorities regarding equality between women and men, of which Sandra Ribeiro highlights two.

The first is to hold an "enlightened and enlightening" debate on the socio-economic impacts of Covid-19 from a gender perspective, assessed by scientific and transparent research and "evidence-based".

Portugal has, therefore, asked the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) to prepare a "research note" on the impact of the pandemic on equality.

The preliminary report will be presented at the High-Level Group meeting, but the final version should not be known until March. It will incorporate the conclusions that the Portuguese presidency will refer to the European Council.

WFH will also be examined from the point of view of gender equality. The European Economic and Social Council, at the request of the Portuguese presidency, is expected to issue some conclusions on risks and opportunities of WFM soon.

"While it can be very positive for reconciliation, it can also be a brutal mousetrap for women to return home," Sandra Ribeiro warned.

Domestic violence will also be the subject of a specific chapter in the framework of the impact of Covid-19 on women.

"We are at a huge risk of setbacks in gender equality. It will be challenging not to go back a few years when this is over. So we really need to be on the lookout now," the IGC president pointed out, stressing that doing a real-time study on the impact of Covid could have an effect on crisis recovery measures that come out and ensure that the gender perspective is applied "across the board".

Another priority on the Portuguese presidency's equality agenda is to mark ten years of the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe's document on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.

The Portuguese presidency will mark the decade with a high-level conference on 6 April and will try to find consensus "so that the principles of the Convention can be respected even if the Convention itself is not ratified by all EU Member States".

Two other "more difficult" topics are also on the agenda, Ribeiro said: gender balance on company boards, through the imposition of quotas, and wage transparency to ensure equal pay.

The first "has not evolved in recent presidencies" and is "opposed by several Member States for various reasons, some of them fundamental, others semantic", she notes.

On the second, the minister of the presidency, Mariana Vieira da Silva, recently stated that Portugal wants to see a series of binding measures on wage transparency.

"These are two complicated dossiers, which we will try to bring back into the discussion", Ribeiro said.

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