Kolumni European Voicessa: Women in the shadows 24.6.2008
by Anneli Jäätteenmäki MEP, Diana Wallis MEP, and Karin Riis-Jorgensen MEP
One thing was striking about the TV images showing the celebration of the ‘no’ camp after their success in Dublin last Friday: the number of young women participants. Research on euro-scepticism in many countries tends to show that women are more mistrustful of the EU than men. What better way to fuel this mistrust than the images of a Europe governed entirely by men? The images that emerged after the Nice Summit of men getting into limos after the meeting partly fuelled the feeling that there had to be a better way of doing Europe and so eventually the Convention was born.
We have to start doing better with the public face of Europe. If the Lisbon Treaty should still go through in some shape or form, or even indeed without it, there will still be potentially a number of top jobs in the European Union.
The men have been meeting for months; lots of male names have been mentioned and discussed in newspaper columns and elsewhere. Where are the female names? Surely no-one can suggest that the female Commissioners we have had have done any better or worse a job than their male counterparts. So where are the female names that should be being discussed, where is the open and transparent process we would insist upon for any job application in the commercial world of the EU?
The European Union can only expect respect and trust if all its institutions look and feel representative of those they seek to serve. If we go on as normal, that promises not to be the case. Women make up more than half of the population of the EU; they should at least be equally present in its governance structures.
