Hunt continues for women to fill top EU posts
22 October 2009 in www.euractiv.com
European Commission President José Manuel Barroso this week called for EU leaders to nominate more women to his next EU executive, as one of the main female candidates for the new Lisbon Treaty top jobs, Mary Robinson, said she was unavailable for consideration.
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 (1979-1982) and Nicole Fontaine (1999-2002).
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.
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- EurActiv Hunt continues for women to fill top EU posts 22 Oct 2009
