Beijing +15 - UN Platform for Action for Gender Equality

26.1.2010

ORAL QUESTION WITH DEBATE O-0006/10
pursuant to Rule 115 of the Rules of Procedure
by Eva-Britt Svensson, on behalf of the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality
to the Council

The European Union has been pursuing the goal of equal treatment of women and men for over half a century. Article 2 of the Treaty provides that the Union shall promote equality between men and women and a wide range of instruments are used including legislation, policy proposals and budget commitments. To evaluate the effectiveness of these different instruments in reaching gender equality it is necessary to have comparable and sex-disaggregated statistical data.

 

The achievement of gender equality will only be possible if efforts are made at every level. At the international level the most significant process takes place in the Beijing framework of the United Nations. The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 based its work on the fundamental principle whereby the human rights of women and the girl child are recognised as an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights. Fifteen years later progress at the global level has been made only in some of the areas identified in the Beijing Platform for Action.

 

–  How can the European Union support the UN work on gender equality?

 

–  How can the indicators for gender equality developed at EU level for monitoring progress in the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action contribute to the monitoring mechanisms of the Lisbon Strategy post 2010?

 

–  How should the EU indicators and the Commission’s forthcoming roadmap for gender equality be linked?

 

–  What action can we take in the areas where there are today no indicators at EU level - Human Rights of Women, Women and the Media and Women and the Environment?

 

 

Tabled: 26.01.2010

Forwarded: 27.01.2010

Deadline for reply: 17.02.2010