EU & UN News - Feb 2010
European Commission – women on board
With Denmark appointing Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard as the country's next commissioner and the Dutch government confirming outgoing Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes for another five-year term, the number of women in the next EU executive increases to nine.
Alongside nationality, geography (North-South, East-West), the size of the country and political affiliation, gender can also be seen as a criterion when European leaders horse-trade over top EU jobs. According to the European Commission's roadmap for equality between women and men, ‘women continue to be under–represented in political and economic decision-making’.
Historically, this has been reflected in the positions of power in the European institutions. The Commission has never had a female president, while just two of 13 European Parliament presidents have been female since direct elections were introduced in 1979. These were both Frenchwomen, Simone Veil (1979-82) and Nicole Fontaine (1999-02). Currently, only two of the 27 EU heads of state and government are women: Angela Merkel in Germany and Dalia Grybauskaite in Lithuania.
Women currently represent 35% of all MEPs in the European Parliament, higher than the European average (24%) but lower than the trio of Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland - the only EU countries with more than 40% women in parliament.
Women fly highest among outgoing commissioners
Margot Wallström (Sweden) and Meglena Kuneva (Bulgaria) are among the few outgoing commissioners to have secured new jobs, as most of those leaving the EU executive have either decided to retire from politics or pursue lower-profile activities.
Parity
The Vice-President of the Spanish government Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, Equality Minister Bibiana Aido and British Minister for Women and Equality and Leader of the House of Commons, Harriet Harmen inaugurated the second European Summit of Women in Power on 3rd February. The speakers recalled the role played by Europe in the promotion of parity whilst highlighting the limits of female representation in politics and the economic sphere. Ministers expressed their support of the fight against violence against women, one of the priorities of the Spanish presidency and the support of the creation by the UN of an Agency for Women. Those taking part signed a declaration in which they promised to include male/female equality on the agenda of their respective States.
Euractiv.com
Climate change - Gender view missing at Copenhagen
Women are known to be innovators when it comes to responding to climate change, but the question is, how to ensure that gender equality and the role of women are reflected in climate change agreements? Women in poor countries will be the most affected by climate change effects, according to the 2009 State of the World Population report, released last month by the UN Population Fund. This is because women comprise the majority of the world’s farmers, have access to fewer income-earning opportunities, and have limited or no access to technology.
The news agency IPS/TerraViva reported from Copenhagen on the lack of gender perspective on climate change. IPS spoke with Lorena Aguilar Revelo, global senior gender advisor to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a part of the Global Gender and Climate Alliance launched at the UN climate change conference in Bali in December 2007. Revelo commented:
‘…Three years ago we established this [Gender and Climate Change] alliance, and we are making sure in the new texts that any regime that comes after Copenhagen – and now probably Mexico – must have gender in it. So far, the parties have submitted 39 references to gender and climate change, after a tremendous amount of advocacy work. But we need to make sure that there are specific resources for women … they have a tremendous amount of knowledge on mitigation and adaptation but they are not part of anybody’s agenda.
‘Women have been playing a major role in the management of natural resources for centuries, dealing with the agricultural sector. In countries of Africa (e.g. Congo) they produce 73% and in Africa as a whole 50% of the food consumed on the continent. Unfortunately, women only own 1% of the land worldwide … when you look at the money from financing mechanisms associated with climate change, you don’t find women as major beneficiaries. The reason is that the whole climate change convention is gender blind. Of the three major conventions related to climate change – desertification, biodiversity and climate change – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is the only agreement with no mention of gender.
There are innumerable global mandates calling for integrating a gender perspective into environmental and poverty reduction efforts that also apply to climate change. Nevertheless, there is no gender plan of action and even no mention of gender or women’s issues. And if you analyse all the numbers that have been developed by the least developed countries, only four of them mention gender issues – in a very simplistic way. Bangladesh is the only country that has made an effort to move along these lines.’
For full interview, see http://www.ipsnews.net
EU Foreign Minister on Haiti
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Cathy Ashton, left, Leader of the House of Lords, was recently appointed as the new EU foreign minister in Brussels. She will represent the foreign policy of half a billion EU citizens, and will rank just behind Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel as one of the world's most powerful women immersed in some of its most intractable problems. Her main areas will be the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme, the Middle East and Europe's fractious relations with Russia. Afghanistan will loom ever larger as the EU face greater US pressure to step up their commitments.
The High Representative for the Union's Foreign Policy, Catherine Ashton is facing the humanitarian disaster in Haiti and this will be a test of the EU's capability to act rapidly, effectively and together. According to Ms Ashton the Union and the Member States have succeeded in providing the country "with all the immediate, emergency support it needs": specialised personnel, experts, building materials, food and medicines. The High Representative does however point out that it is now necessary to prepare for the next stage, ie the reconstruction of the country. Following a European Development Ministers' meeting and after initial aid of 3 million euros, the Union has promised to devote 420 million euros including 222 in emergency aid to Haiti.
www.eurative.com
HAITI: Displaced Women Face Double Jeopardy
Women's rights and development activists working in Haiti say that greater attention must be paid to the immediate needs of women and girls, as well as their role in the long-term reconstruction of the devastated country.
Marguerite A. Suozzi www.ipsnews.net/news
Obituary – Helvi Sipilä
Helvi Sipilä, the first woman to hold the rank of Assistant Secretary-General at the United Nations, has died aged 94. She was an inspirational leader with a life-long commitment to gender equality. At the UN she advocated strongly and effectively for gender equality and the empowerment of women. A barrister, she represented Finland on CSW in the 1960s and early 1970s, serving as Vice-Chair and Chair. She was Secretary-General at the first UN World Conference on Women (Mexico, 1975) and helped found UNIFEM, the UN fund for the advancement of women. In 1972, she was appointed Assistant Secretary-General, a remarkable achievement at a time when 97% of UN senior management was male. She headed the Centre for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs until 1980. Ireland's Máire Geoghegan Quinn has been given the new innovation portfolio at the EU executive. The job is an expanded version of the old science & research post, and comes just months before the first European Innovation Act is due to be published. The new post has been well flagged - EC President José Manuel Barroso has repeatedly pledged to streamline innovation policy Compiled by Kath Davies - Feb 2010
Euractiv.com
EU's first innovation commissioner
Ann Mettler, executive director of the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think-tank, said the new role would be a cross-cutting portfolio that works across several departments. She commented, "It's important that the new commissioner embodies innovation within the Commission and challenges the conventional wisdom".
Euractiv.com
