REPORT on women’s poverty in Europe

24.6.2022 - (2021/2170(INI))

Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality
Rapporteur: Lina Gálvez Muñoz
Rapporteur for the opinion (*):
Lucia Ďuriš Nicholsonová, Committee on Employment and Social Affairs
(*) Associated committee – Rule 57 of the Rules of Procedure

MOTION FOR A EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION

on women’s poverty in Europe

(2021/2170(INI))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to Articles 2 and 3(3) of the Treaty on European Union,

– having regard to Articles 8, 9, 151, 153 and 157 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

– having regard to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and in particular its provisions on social rights and equality between men and women,

– having regard to the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,

– having regard to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the principle of ‘leaving no one behind’, and in particular Goal 1, which seeks to end poverty, Goal 5, which seeks to achieve gender equality and improve living conditions for women, and Goal 8, which seeks to achieve sustainable economic growth,

– having regard to the EU’s growth strategy ‘Europe 2020’, in particular its objective of reducing the number of  people in the EU living below national poverty lines by 25 % by 2020, thereby lifting over 20 million people out of poverty, and the need to fully deploy Member States’ social security and pensions systems in order to ensure adequate income support,

– having regard to the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention),

– having regard to International Labour Organization Convention No 190 on eliminating violence and harassment in the world of work,

– having regard to the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan,

– having regard to Council Recommendation (EU) 2021/1004 of 14 June 2021 establishing a European Child Guarantee[1],

– having regard to Directive 2006/54/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 July 2006 on the implementation of the principle of equal opportunities and equal treatment of men and women in matters of employment and occupation[2],

– having regard to Directive (EU) 2019/1158 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on work-life balance for parents and carers[3] (the Work-Life Balance Directive),

– having regard to the Commission communication of 5 March 2020 entitled ‘A Union of Equality: Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025’ (COM(2020)0152),

– having regard to its resolution of 13 October 2005 on women and poverty in the European Union[4],

– having regard to its resolution of 8 March 2011 on the face of female poverty in the European Union[5],

– having regard to its resolution of 13 September 2011 on women entrepreneurship in small and medium-sized enterprises[6],

– having regard to its resolution of 26 May 2016 entitled ‘Poverty: a gender perspective’[7],

– having regard to its resolution of 4 April 2017 on women and their roles in rural areas[8],

– having regard to its resolution of 14 June 2017 on the need for an EU strategy to end and prevent the gender pension gap[9],

– having regard to its resolution of 3 October 2017 on women’s economic empowerment in the private and public sectors in the EU[10],

– having regard to its resolution of 15 November 2018 on care services in the EU for improved gender equality[11],

– having regard to its resolution of 15 January 2019 on gender equality and taxation policies in the EU[12],

– having regard to its resolution of 30 January 2020 on the gender pay gap[13],

– having regard to its resolution of 21 January 2021 on the gender perspective in the COVID-19 crisis and post-crisis period[14],

– having regard to the resolution of 7 July 2021 entitled ‘An old continent growing older – possibilities and challenges related to ageing policy post-2020’[15],

– having regard to its resolution of 10 February 2021 on reducing inequalities with a special focus on in-work poverty[16],

– having regard to the Council conclusions of 10 December 2019 entitled ‘Gender-Equal Economies in the EU: The Way Forward’,

– having regard to the report of 5 March 2020 by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) entitled ‘Beijing +25: the fifth review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in the EU Member States’,

– having regard to the report of 27 May 2020 by the International Labour Organization entitled ‘COVID-19 and the world of work. Fourth edition’,

– having regard to the policy brief of 15 July 2021 by Eurofound and the EIGE entitled ‘Upward convergence in gender equality: How close is the Union of equality?’,

– having regard to the study of December 2017 by Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs of the Directorate-General for Internal Policies entitled ‘Gender perspective on access to energy in the EU’,

– having regard to the EIGE’s 2019 and 2020 Gender Equality Indexes,

– having regard to the position paper of June 2021 by Make Mothers Matter entitled ‘Mothers’ Poverty in the EU’,

– having regard to the assessment of the Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy 2021 and Proposal for a Joint Employment Report 2021 of February 2021 by the European Anti-Poverty Network entitled ‘Working towards a Socially Inclusive and Poverty-proof Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic’,

– having regard to the study of 19 May 2021 by Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs of the Directorate-General for Internal Policies entitled ‘COVID-19 and its economic impact on women and women’s poverty: Insight from 5 European Countries’,

– having regard to the study of 14 June 2021 by Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs of the Directorate-General for Internal Policies entitled ‘Gender equality: Economic value of care from the perspective of the applicable EU funds’,

– having regard to its resolution of 14 April  2016 on meeting the anti-poverty targets in the light of increasing household costs [17]and the opinion of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality thereon,

– having regard to the work of the EU Platform on Combatting Homelessness, launched in June 2021,

– having regard to Rule 54 of its Rules of Procedure,

– having regard to the opinion of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs,

– having regard to the report of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (A9-0194/2022),

A. whereas gender equality is a core value of the Union enshrined in Article 2 TEU; whereas Article 8 TFEU lays down the principle of gender mainstreaming;

B. whereas the eradication of poverty is one of the priorities of the EU, enshrined in Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union and in Article 34 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and is a headline target in the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) action plan, reflecting the EU’s commitment to combat poverty in its policies;

C. whereas in the EU, the number of women in poverty is still higher than the number of men in poverty[18]; whereas despite a reduction in poverty in the EU among both women and men, women continue to be disproportionally more affected by poverty and the risk of social exclusion than men, in particular women who experience intersectional forms of discrimination; whereas in 2020, the risk of poverty and social exclusion (AROPE) in the EU was higher for women (22.9 %) than men (20.9 %), though in both cases it has decreased since 2015 (24.9 % and 23.1 % respectively); whereas since 2017, the gender-poverty gap has increased in 21 Member States[19]; whereas according to the data, poverty rates among women vary greatly between Member States; whereas owing to the strong correlation between female poverty and child poverty, 1 in 4 children in the EU are at risk of poverty or social exclusion;

D. whereas according to estimates for 2019 in the EU-27, women are particularly affected by the risk of poverty (AROPE), with the poverty rate standing at 17.1 % after social transfers; whereas since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, women have been disproportionately affected in the socioeconomic sphere, including, in some cases, by loss of employment; whereas the employment rate of women has even fallen more sharply than it did during the 2008 recession; whereas this is, among other things, due to the increase of unpaid care, domestic and educational work carried out mainly by women, and has also resulted in an increase in women’s poverty; whereas even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of people in temporary and part-time posts were women, especially in the service sector, and whereas the pandemic has reinforced this trend; whereas the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are not yet fully comprehended and whereas the socioeconomic impact will continue to be experienced in the coming years; whereas it is therefore essential to examine female poverty in context of the handling and aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis; whereas measures taken to exit the financial crisis of 2008 have not been sufficient to reduce women’s poverty; whereas reductions in funding for social public services and lower wages disproportionality affect women, owing to their greater reliance on social public services and allowances;

E. whereas gender mainstreaming means taking into account the gender differences within the whole policy cycle and adding an intersectional approach taking into account diversity among women and men when designing, implementing and evaluating policies, programmes and projects in order to enhance gender equality; whereas until now EU policies have not deployed real mainstreamed policies or included an intersectional approach;

F. whereas Article 3(3) of the Treaty on European Union commits the Union to combating ‘social exclusion and discrimination’ and promoting ‘social justice and protection [and] equality between women and men’ in line with the social market economy concept; whereas the European Pillar of Social Rights action plan has the specific aim of reducing the number of people at risk of poverty by at least 15 million by 2030, including 5 million children; whereas the social, green and gender equality agendas are interlinked and share the goals of ensuring sustainable growth and a fair distribution of resources; whereas the discussions on the review of the current EU model of socioeconomic governance should take into consideration the EU’s commitment to reduce inequalities and eradicate poverty, in particular women’s poverty;

G. whereas the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter, has pointed out that European Union should develop an EU-wide anti-poverty strategy that ensures a structural, broad approach to eradicating female poverty; whereas a fairer social contract is needed for the post-pandemic European Union, including economic policies aimed at decreasing economic inequalities;

H. whereas parental poverty often leads to child poverty; whereas investing in policies to support women also improves the living conditions of their families, and in particular of their children; whereas the EU and the Member States must respect, protect and fulfil the rights of children in line with the Treaty on European Union; whereas the rights of children are jeopardised in situations of poverty; whereas eradicating child poverty is included in Principle 11 of the EPSR;

I. whereas single-parent families are at greater risk of poverty and social exclusion and bear a higher probability of transmission of poverty over several generations; whereas 85 % of single-parent families are headed by women; whereas in 2020, 42.1 % of the EU population living in single-adult households with dependent children were at risk of poverty or social exclusion;

J. whereas women's poverty is the result of a lifetime of discrimination; whereas gender stereotypes still influence the division of labour at home, in education, in the workplace and in society and access to power and decision-making; whereas unpaid care and domestic work, which are mostly carried out by women, imposes a disproportionate burden on women; whereas globally, women make up over 70 % of workers in the health and care sector; whereas these kinds of jobs have systematically been undervalued because they have been, and still are, performed for free by women within households; whereas women have lower pay than men; whereas women have more part-time contracts due to time poverty; whereas women are suffering in-work poverty that leads to higher risks of poverty and social exclusion due to low labour intensity;

K. whereas due consideration should be given to the recommendations of the EPSR on gender equality, equal opportunities and active support to employment;

L. whereas women’s poverty is multidimensional and for this reason we need to combat all causes and consequences of all facets of women’s poverty, including material deprivation, but also the lack of access to different resources and services, which limits their ability to fully enjoy their citizenship; whereas female poverty is directly influenced by the lack of fair valuation of work mainly carried out by women, career breaks due to maternity leave or care responsibilities, unequal sharing of unpaid caring responsibilities and domestic work and segregation in education and subsequently in the labour market; whereas women’s poverty results in their exclusion from certain social and political aspects of life; whereas at the same time, the lack of adequate access to resources and services increases women’s risk of falling into or remaining in poverty, which shows the mutual interdependence between poverty and social and political exclusion;

M. whereas the impact of poverty on women and men differs and whereas indicators to better understand the feminisation of poverty such as age, life expectancy, income inequality, the gender pay gap, type of household and social transfers therefore also need to be considered; whereas synergies between various actions carried out and political measures supporting gender equality in employment, education, taxation policies and housing can help to combat deep-rooted causes of poverty and social exclusion more effectively;

N. whereas there is an increased risk of poverty and social exclusion among some groups of women such as single mothers, women above the age of 65, women with disabilities, women with low levels of education and women from migrant backgrounds;

O. whereas women outnumber men at older ages within the EU-27 population; whereas in 2019, there were more than twice as many very old women (aged 85 years or more) as very old men; whereas ageing developments will have profound implications for governments, business and civil society, impacting especially health and social care systems, labour markets, public finances and pension entitlements;

P. whereas figures show that on average in the EU 29.5 % of women with disabilities are at risk of falling victim to poverty and social exclusion, compared with 27.5 % of their male counterparts;

Q. whereas women from more vulnerable groups, such as young women, women with disabilities, women with a migrant background, Roma women, women from religious or ethnic minorities, as well as LBTQI+ women, face additional and intersecting forms of discrimination when accessing education, healthcare, employment and social services, and are therefore exposed to a higher risk of poverty;

R. whereas Roma people face discrimination in accessing employment initiatives such as the Youth Guarantee; whereas public employment services often lack the capacity to reach them or apply indirect discrimination practices;

S. whereas, in relation to poverty data, the statistical household unit defines poverty within households, and does not consider the gender inequalities in the internal distribution of resources, making it difficult to obtain reliable gender-disaggregated data;

T. whereas women's poverty increases the risk of homelessness, lack of access to adequate housing and energy poverty; whereas policy measures tailored specifically to single parents are needed;

U. whereas gender equality in the labour market is an important instrument for eliminating poverty among women that benefits not only women but the economy as a whole, with a positive impact on GDP, employment levels and productivity; whereas improving gender equality would lead to an increase in EU GDP per capita of between 6.1 and 9.6 % and an additional 10.5 million jobs, which would benefit both women and men, by 2050;

V. whereas although work in highly female-dominated sectors is essential and of high socioeconomic value, it is undervalued and lower paid than work in male-dominated sectors; whereas there is an urgent need to reassess the adequacy of wages in female-dominated sectors related to their social and economic value and to move forward on minimum wages, minimum income and pay transparency in EU regulations;

W. whereas the right to work is an essential precondition if women are to enjoy economic independence, professional fulfilment and effective equal rights; whereas precarious employment should thus be eradicated, through the mandatory application of the principle that for every actual job there should be a permanent post, and by recognising and enhancing the right to work with rights;

X. whereas the average gender employment gap stands at 11.5 %, with women disproportionally highly represented in low-paid, precarious job sectors; whereas women are more represented in flexible work forms, atypical and flexible contracts (part-time work, temporary work, etc.); whereas women face pregnancy and maternity discrimination; whereas the gender pay gap stood at 14.1 % at EU level in 2019, though there were significant differences between Member States[20]; whereas the gender gap in earnings has increased in 17 Member States since 2010, while the gender gap in income has gone up in 19 Member States, leading to an overall increase in gender inequality in earnings and income in the EU[21]; whereas about 10% of the working population in the EU is at risk of poverty, and it is mainly women who are paid minimum wage or less than a living wage, owing, among other things, to the greater involvement of women in the informal economy; whereas combating undeclared work and setting adequate and fair levels of minimum wages that provide for a decent standard of living can help to reduce wage inequality, the gender pay gap and female poverty;

Y. whereas the European Social Charter recognises the right of all workers, and therefore also female workers, to fair remuneration that is sufficient for a decent standard of living for themselves and their families, and the right to equal pay for work of equal value; whereas, furthermore, it establishes the right to protection against poverty and social exclusion, and it is contributing to reducing the existing pay gap between men and women;

Z. whereas the rate of trans people in paid employment is only 51 %, compared with 69.3 % of the general population; whereas unemployment is a particular issue for trans women, who are nearly three times as likely to be unemployed as the general population average[22];

AA. whereas only 20.7 % of women with disabilities and 28.6 % of men with disabilities are in full-time employment; whereas in some Member States, persons with disabilities often lose their disability entitlements upon taking up employment, which increases their risk of in-work poverty;

AB. whereas the gender pension gap averaged 29.4 % in 2019[23] as a result of the imbalances created by persistent lifelong inequalities; whereas this pension gap means that women are more likely to fall below the poverty line as they get older, also bearing in mind that female life expectancy is longer than male life expectancy, deepening the consequences of poverty and social exclusion; whereas greater labour inclusion throughout a person’s lifetime will help to close the gender pension gap;

AC. whereas the technological and digital revolution we are witnessing is increasing digital progress and new business opportunities and whereas this technological and digital revolution is changing economic patterns, social systems and the labour market; whereas everyone in our society, especially women, must have the chance to participate in this prosperity;

AD. whereas policies targeted at increasing the participation of women in the fields related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and artificial intelligence, and the adoption of a multi-level approach to address the gender gap at all levels of education and employment in the digital sector need to be further promoted;

AE. whereas girls outperform boys in school but often encounter greater difficulties or are prevented from translating this educational success into professional accomplishment by family and other pressures;

AF. whereas women who live in rural areas are particularly affected by poverty; whereas many women who live in rural areas are not even registered on the labour market or as unemployed; whereas the rate of unemployment among women in rural areas is extremely high, and those who are employed have very low incomes; whereas women in rural areas have limited access to education;

AG. whereas a common EU approach to the care sector, in addition to Member State policies, would create significant added value; whereas women take on unpaid care work more often than men, and caring for children or dependants is therefore one of the most common reasons for women to reduce their working hours or withdraw from the labour market; whereas women more regularly put their careers on hold or take on short-term, part-time, precarious or even informal employment that can be adapted to a caregiving schedule, which affects their earnings and their contributions to their pension funds and thus has an impact on their economic independence in old age; whereas universal access to high-quality healthcare and social services and facilities at affordable prices, such as early childhood care and education or care for other dependants, is not only key for avoiding increasing poverty, especially for women, but is also critical for an economy that serves the public interest; whereas investment in these services therefore has a positive impact on women’s economic independence and their ability to participate in the labour market; whereas social protection measures are absolutely key for tackling female poverty, not only economically but also in its multidimensionality;

AH. whereas poverty exacerbates the impacts of gender-based violence on women as increased economic difficulties make it hard for women in abusive relationships to leave their partner; whereas gender-based violence is a structural problem that can be found across all socioeconomic groups and is independent of origin or belief; whereas poverty puts women at greater risk of trafficking and sexual exploitation as it makes them and their families economically dependent on their abusers; whereas gender-based violence also contributes to poverty and social exclusion as violence has consequences for health and can lead to the loss of one’s job and homelessness;

AI. whereas harassment at the workplace, including sexual and psychological harassment, of which women are usually the victims, has a deterrent effect on women, including increased absenteeism, reduced productivity and consequently loss of income and contributes to driving them out of the labour market, which has a negative impact on an individual’s career and economic independence; whereas reporting harassment at the workplace can lead to dismissal or isolation of the victim;

AJ. whereas the current EU and national taxation policies reinforce existing gender gaps; whereas these schemes reproduce traditional gender roles and disincentivise women from entering, remaining in and in particular returning to the labour market;

AK. whereas it is estimated that currently 1 in 10 girls cannot afford sanitary products; whereas in its resolution of 15 January 2019 on gender equality and taxation policies in the EU, Parliament called on all Member States to eliminate the so-called care and tampon tax by making use of the flexibility introduced in the VAT Directive and by applying tax exemptions or 0 % VAT rates to these essential basic goods;

1. Points out that, according to Eurostat, there are currently 64.6 million women and 57.6 million men living in poverty in the Member States, which shows that the impact of poverty on women and men is different; calls on the Commission to develop an ambitious 2030 European anti-poverty strategy, with concrete targets for reducing poverty and a focus on ending women’s poverty and breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty risks;

2. Underlines that women’s poverty also needs to be analysed from an intersectional approach, which entails a gender-sensitive analysis that takes into account intersecting forms of discrimination on the grounds of characteristics such as socioeconomic background, migrant and ethnic origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression; calls for the EIGE’s Gender Equality Index to be incorporated into the social scoreboard; calls on the EIGE to provide data disaggregated intersectionally and by gender, and calls on the Member States to use this data in order to better address country-specific challenges and develop national recovery plans, as well as to improve synergies among different packages, funds and policies;

3. Underlines the importance of policies that take into account the demographic challenge and promote equal opportunities for all, particularly those that are most hit by the crisis, and of ensuring that all business opportunities offered by the current technological and digital revolution should focus on women;

4. Calls on the Member States to do similar and regular work on collecting and analysing disaggregated data when they design or evaluate their policies and practices in order to gather information and figures on the situation of women in specific precarious conditions, such as women suffering from energy precariousness, the digital divide, occupational diseases, undernutrition and malnutrition;

5. Urges the Commission and the Member States to effectively address the inequalities women face, tackling their main components, and therefore barriers in the labour market, as well as access to affordable quality services such as childcare and long-term care services and to promote access to public pension schemes for self-employed people, inactive persons, the unemployed (either short or long term), or those in ‘atypical’ employment;

6. Notes that poverty continues to be measured based on accumulated household income, which assumes that all members of the household earn the same and distribute resources equally; calls for individualised rights and calculations based on individual income in order to combat the true extent of women’s poverty;

7. Calls for multidimensionality in measuring poverty, including time poverty; calls on Eurostat to coordinate with Member States the gender-sensitive design of the European Time Use Survey and how regular it should be carried out;

8. Welcomes the Commission’s announcement of a ‘European care strategy’, but calls on it to go beyond measures in the care sector and ensure a transition towards a caring economy that takes a holistic, gender-responsive and lifelong approach to care, including measures to promote ecological sustainability, fair working conditions and adequate wages in order to maintain the attractiveness of work in the care sector, end discrimination, combat poverty, violence and abuse, set minimum standards and adequate quality guidelines for care throughout a person’s lifetime and provide support for formal and informal carers, unpaid carers and the people they care for; calls on the Member States to create incentives for employers to promote a better work-life balance;

9. Notes that all Member States have increased care packages during the pandemic and introduced special provisions for single-parent households; urges the Member States to extend such provisions during the recovery period;

10. Is convinced that the axiom that ‘work is the best cure for poverty’ no longer applies today in the face of low-wage sectors, atypical and precarious working conditions and the dismantling of social security systems and that effective collective agreements and minimum wage systems are needed to achieve a poverty-free society;

11. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to guarantee sufficient financial protection, not only for people with lifelong employment, but also for those who provide unpaid care work for dependants and household and educational care services, those who are in precarious employment and those who experience long periods of unemployment;

12. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to promote policies that aim to eliminate precarious work and involuntary part-time work in order to improve the situation for women in the labour market;

13. Stresses the pivotal role of women working in the social, care, cleaning, education, health and retail sectors that keep our societies functioning, as shown by the COVID-19 crisis; calls for typically female-dominated work to be reassessed and revaluated and for cross-sector gender-neutral job evaluation tools to be developed and applied in order to better assess and more fairly remunerate female-dominated work and ensure equal pay for equal work and work of equal value, while at the same time strengthening women’s entrepreneurship in small and medium-sized enterprises;

14. Notes that the vast majority of retail workers and cleaners are women and are often only paid the minimum wage, and that the COVID-19 pandemic has put them at even greater risk of poverty; stresses the urgent need to improve wages and combat precarious employment; urges the Member States to raise the status of health professionals by means of decent wages and working conditions and, in particular, by concluding proper employment contracts;

15. Highlights that in order to tackle the multidimensionality of women’s poverty, it is necessary to overcome the segregation of unpaid domestic work and care responsibilities mainly performed by women and strengthen the fight against stereotypes in order to reinforce care service work-life balance measures and family-friendly working arrangements, such as adaptable working hours and the possibility of teleworking to promote the ‘equal earner-equal carer’ model (time use policy)[24],so as to allow women and men to better reconcile their professional life with their private life; urges the Member States to fully transpose and implement the Work-Life Balance Directive so as to ensure a fair division of work and family life, and invites them to go beyond the directive’s minimum standards; stresses that in-work poverty needs to be addressed at its root causes, for example by promoting education and training, establishing minimum wages and ensuring social protection; calls on the Commission to urge the Member States to invest in qualitative education and training and support them in doing so, to share good practices and to pay specific attention to lifelong learning;

16. Stresses that women are disproportionately, and often involuntarily, concentrated in precarious work, including high levels of part-time work and low-paid, fixed-term and zero-hour contracts; urges the Member States to implement the International Labour Organization recommendations intended to reduce the scale of precarious work, such as restricting the circumstances in which precarious contracts can be used and limiting the length of time workers can be employed on such contracts;

17. Calls on the Member States to implement active and effective policies to prevent and combat harassment in the workplace, including sexual and psychological harassment; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure proper and adequate funding mechanisms for programmes and actions to combat harassment in the workplace, including mechanisms to support women in reporting cases of harassment; calls on the Member States and the EU to ratify International Labour Organization Convention No 190 on eliminating violence and harassment in the world of work;

18. Stresses the importance of increasing awareness about the consequences of women’s choices in the labour market and the importance of their economic independence to protect them from poverty and social exclusion;

19. Expresses its concern that women with children are discriminated against in the workplace because they are mothers and not because their job performance is inferior to that of their peers; urges the Member States to actively promote a positive image of mothers as employees;

20. Underlines the crucial role of high-quality public services in combating women’s poverty, in particular services for early childhood education and care, or care for other dependants such as elderly people; calls on the Member States to establish appropriate mechanisms to recognise this life achievement;

21. Stresses that climate change also has a big impact on female poverty as women are more dependent on natural resources and, since they constitute the majority of poor people in the EU, have fewer resources to protect themselves against the negative effects of climate change; regrets that a gender perspective has not been consistently introduced in the EU’s climate policies; calls on the Commission to mainstream gender equality into the EU’s climate change policies and legislation; is of the opinion that the Fit for 55 package and the social climate fund should be designed and implemented with a clear gender dimension and benefit women as equally as men;

22. Calls for the EU and the Member States to protect women living in energy poverty by providing a timely and coordinated response to address the long-term impact of the energy crisis; highlights that access to affordable utilities must be guaranteed to low-income households, and in particular older women and single mothers;

23. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to mainstream gender equality into all policies, programmes and actions and establish better work-life balance policies and adequate measures to guarantee women’s participation in the labour market, such as better maternity leave, significantly longer paternity leave periods, paid and non-transferable parental leave, flexible working hours, on-site childcare facilities, care services and remote working policies; stresses the importance of gender mainstreaming and tailoring the economic policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic to the specific needs of women and the structure of their economic activities;

24. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to mainstream gender equality into all transport-related legislation, policies, programmes and actions and to include a gender perspective in the design of mobility, affordable housing and urban planning;

25. Highlights that homelessness among women should not be underestimated and misperceived as a minor social problem in the EU; points at the lack of comprehensive disaggregated data on the nature and extent of women’s homelessness, which makes this problem less visible; urges the EU and its Member States to integrate a gender perspective into policies and practices that address homelessness and the lack of access to affordable and adequate housing and energy, and to develop specific strategies aimed at eradicating these problems by 2030, while ensuring that services work appropriately and effectively to meet the needs of homeless women; stresses the importance of recognising gender-based violence as one of the root causes aggravating the risk of homelessness among women, and stresses the need to look at how women’s needs intersect with broader socioeconomic and structural barriers; calls on all actors to integrate a gender perspective into the European Platform on Combatting Homelessness; is convinced that the ‘housing first’ principle can play an important role in fighting homelessness and calls for these projects to be rolled out in all Member States;

26. Notes that the worsening social and economic situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has increased all forms of abuse and violence towards women, as well as prostitution, in violation of their human rights; underlines the need to increase public, financial and human resources in order to support groups at risk of poverty and tackle situations posing a risk to children and young people, the elderly, people with disabilities and the homeless;

27. Notes that women’s economic independence plays a crucial role in their ability to escape situations of gender-based violence; calls, therefore, for the provision of support and protection measures to support women in these situations, the adoption of a comprehensive directive on preventing and combating all forms of gender-based violence, the addition of gender-based violence in the list of EU crimes, the EU ratification of the Istanbul Convention and the ratification thereof by Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia; stresses that a life free from violence is fundamental if women are to participate in the labour market, reach their full potential and be financially independent; condemns deliberate disinformation about tools and initiatives to combat gender-based violence in the EU; expresses concern that this disinformation is gaining a foothold in Europe and thus making it even more difficult to protect women from violence;

28. Calls on the Member States to combat harmful practices such as female genital mutilation, early and forced marriage and so-called ‘honour-related violence’, which specifically injures and limits young women and girls;

29. Considers prostitution to be a serious form of violence and exploitation affecting mostly women and children; calls on the Member States to take specific action to combat the economic, social and cultural causes of prostitution so that women in a situation of poverty and social exclusion do not fall victim to such exploitation; calls on the Member States to take specific action to help prostitutes with their social and professional reintegration;

30. Calls on the Commission to propose proactive measures through the European social funds and the European agricultural fund for rural development to promote women’s employment, the facilitation of access to social services and socioeconomic development in rural areas; encourages the Member States, in cooperation with regional and local authorities, to reduce the risk of poverty among women in rural areas by empowering them and improving their quality of life through the provision of quality educational programmes and quality employment conditions, including teleworking and a decent income; calls for positive action encouraging women farmers in particular to stay in rural areas, including the promotion of community centres that can provide technical advice and assistance to keep farms operating and help them to survive and encourage young people to invest in agriculture and livestock to ensure its long-term survival;

31. Stresses the crucial role of all EU social funds and programmes, particularly the European Social Fund Plus, the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund for Displaced Workers, the Just Transition Fund, the Recovery and Resilience Facility, and the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund; highlights that through the ESF+, the Member States and the Commission should aim to mitigate the socioeconomic impacts of the crisis, particularly on women, to increase the numbers of women in employment and help them to reconcile their work and personal lives, to combat poverty and its gender dimension, the feminisation of poverty and gender discrimination in the labour market and in education and training, to support the most vulnerable and to combat child poverty; calls on the Member States to make full use of funds with a gender perspective;

32. Emphasises that national efforts to ensure Roma inclusion should be accelerated in all Member States; calls on the Commission to promote inclusion and thereby ensure the participation of Roma girls and women at all levels, including those working at local, regional and EU level; points out that this should take into account equality between men and women and focus on the elevation of Member States’ good practices to Union level;

33. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to supplement the EU’s financial aid with study programmes and projects that give talented Roma girls and women the opportunity to use continuing education to free themselves from intergenerational poverty, promoting their social integration and developing their knowledge, with a view to improving the situation of the Roma community; calls on the Member States to indicate the level of support they would need in order to implement the recommended measures to integrate the Roma population;

34. Underlines that an increase in women’s poverty has a great impact on wider society; expresses concern about the impact this will have in terms of child poverty; welcomes, in this regard, the adoption of Council Recommendation (EU) 2021/1004 of 14 June 2021 establishing a European Child Guarantee;

35. Highlights the major contribution of women in the fields of employment, culture, education, science, and research; recognises the profound deterioration in the living conditions of women employed in arts and culture, and in micro and small agricultural and rural businesses resulting from the suspension of economic and cultural activities during the pandemic period;

36. Calls for a gender-sensitive approach to the digital transition; urges the Commission to use existing programmes and funding and make available additional funding where needed to fight against women’s digital poverty in order to equip women with the necessary skills to operate safely in the digital environment, and to improve their digital literacy;

37. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to investigate barriers to female entrepreneurship and in particular to conduct a comprehensive analysis of women’s access to finance, helping to end female poverty in the European Union by empowering women to become entrepreneurs and founders of small and medium-sized enterprises contributing to the twin transition; notes that women’s entrepreneurship creates jobs, strengthens the single market and reduces unemployment; notes that a reduced bureaucratic burden for entrepreneurs removes barriers to ensure more women can start businesses; emphasises the importance of knowledge about entrepreneurship and practical experience in schools; calls on the Commission and the Member States to promote women’s empowerment through education, vocational training and lifelong learning; calls, in particular, for greater promotion of STEM subjects and digital, artificial intelligence and financial literacy, in order to combat prevailing stereotypes and ensure that more women enter these sectors and contribute to their development;

38. Calls on the Member States to ensure that all new fiscal policy, including taxation which has a clear gender dimension, tackles and eliminates socioeconomic and gender inequalities in all their dimensions[25]; calls on the Member States to avoid gender discrimination in their tax policies and eliminate VAT on women’s sanitary goods, which disproportionally jeopardises the dignity of lower-income women, and thereby ensure that all women have access to these essential products;

39. Calls on the Member States to take the gender dimension into account when reforming pension systems and adapting the retirement age and to consider the differences between the work patterns of women and men, including all unpaid employment practices, taking into account the higher risk of discrimination of women in the labour market, in particular older women; urges the Member States to take specific measures to prevent and combat the risk of poverty for older and retired women resulting from population ageing and the proportion of older women in disadvantaged or vulnerable positions; calls on the Member States to include compensation for unpaid care work in their pension systems, for example through care credits or other measures added to the carer’s pension, irrespective of whether the care is provided to underage children, elderly persons or sick or disabled persons, while at the same time encouraging men to become carers;

40. Calls on the Commission to refrain from promoting any policy recommendation that would lead to an increase in precarious working relations, the deregulation of working hours, a reduction in salaries, an attack on collective bargaining or the privatisation of public services and social security;

41. Welcomes the ongoing negotiations for the adoption of a directive on adequate minimum wages in the European Union; calls for the EU institutions to adopt an EU framework favouring the establishment or adaptation of a minimum wage per country based inter alia on a national basket of goods and services at real prices, including, among other things, adequate housing, healthy and balanced food, clothing, sustainable transport and energy, health and care and resources enabling people to meaningfully participate in society, culture and education, which would ensure a decent standard of living that would partially help to reduce in-work poverty, in particular for women; calls for fair and adequate minimum wages in the Member States as a necessary safeguard to ensure fairer wage distribution and to guarantee a wage floor protecting women and men in the labour market; is of the opinion that the creation of a minimum wage framework must be achieved and preserved through clear rules, transparent procedures and effective practices, using criteria and guiding indicators to assess adequacy and with the contribution of consultative bodies, among others, and the involvement of social partners;

42. Calls on the Member States to be ambitious in their implementation of the European Child Guarantee and the Pay Transparency Directive, as well as the future Directive on Minimum Wages and Recommendation on Minimum Income;

43. Regrets that overall, gender mainstreaming has not yet been applied across the EU budget, as pointed out by the European Court of Auditors, and calls for this situation to be reversed as a matter of urgency; underlines that gender mainstreaming has to be applied at all levels of the policy cycle and must be based on reliable data; highlights the importance of the implementation of gender-responsive budgeting, including in all programmes in the 2022 budget, in order to achieve gender equality and eliminate women’s poverty; calls on the Commission, in this context, to accelerate the introduction of an effective, transparent and comprehensive methodology and to closely cooperate with Parliament in measuring relevant gender expenditure, as provided for in the Interinstitutional Agreement[26], in order to be able to show tangible results for the 2022 budget and with a view to extending the methodology to all multiannual financial framework programmes;

44. Points out that the EU’s fiscal capacity requires a potential revision of the current economic and social governance to reduce inequalities and female poverty and achieve gender equality; calls for economic and social governance to be consistent with the achievement of gender equality objectives and for the ending of female poverty;

45. Calls on the Council to establish a dedicated configuration on gender equality in order to deliver common and concrete measures to address the challenges in the field of women’s rights and gender equality and ensure that gender equality issues are discussed at the highest political level;

46. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

Poverty levels among women are higher than among men, having risen both in absolute terms and in comparison to figures for the male population. The statistics speak for themselves. In 2020, the risk of poverty or social exclusion (AROPE)[27] in the EU was higher for women than for men (22.9% compared to 20.9%). At the same time, the gender-based poverty gap has widened in 21 Member States since 2017, while the disparity regarding those at risk of poverty (AROPE) [28]remains significant, having risen from 1.3% in 2019 to 2.5% in 2020[29].

While the gender-based poverty gap is undeniably less than might be inferred from other disparities (regarding employment, pay or pensions), findings are affected by, on the one hand, the methods used to collect information and statistics and, on the other, an overly narrow definition of poverty. No account is taken of its multidimensional nature, thereby masking the structural factors that help perpetuate poverty among women from one generation to the next. In both cases, this reflects a lack of gender mainstreaming in statistical surveys, socio-economic analyses, political action and when evaluating policies. It is therefore a matter of urgency to factor in the gender perspective when compiling statistics on poverty and the risk of poverty.

Firstly, it must be remembered that, for the purpose of compiling poverty statistics, total household income is calculated and then divided between the consumption units or persons making up the household, assuming that each receives an equal share – with exceptions being made for correction coefficients linked to age and economies of scale – and that the family unit is free of internal conflict and discrimination. It must be remembered, however, that, in the words of Amartya Sen, laureate of the Nobel Prize in Economics, the family is a place of ‘cooperative conflict’. While members of the family with no income of their own are given access to its resources, establishing a cooperative dynamic, this takes place on an unequal basis, as does the distribution of tasks and available time, these being conditioned in particular by gender or age and constituting a potential source of conflict, discrimination and even violence.

Secondly, poverty is a highly complex phenomenon arising from many interconnected factors, not all of which are monetary in nature. This was the line of thought opened up by Amartya Sen and followed by Sabina Alkire and James Foster in creating the multidimensional poverty index. Official European statistics have also taken this on board in developing the AROPE index, which shows the risk of poverty and social exclusion. For this purpose, indicators such as low work intensity and severe material privation are factored in, together with monetary earnings. However, other aspects emerging from academic research and the findings of international organisations such as the World Bank are being neglected. These include factors such as time poverty, which affects women in particular and which is caught up in a vicious circle with material poverty and deprivation.

 

In other words, material poverty is being compounded by ‘time poverty’, which is defined as the absence of available time after deducting the time necessary for paid employment and unpaid work (caregiving), study or other basic necessities of life such as looking after oneself.  Such multitasking by women often leads to depletion through social reproduction, leaving them exhausted by their multiple roles and unable to secure a decent life for themselves.  Time poverty deprives them of the time or autonomy necessary to ensure decent working conditions, financial autonomy, training or access to the basic resources and minimum services that would guarantee them a healthy life and enable them to participate fully in their communities and societies.

Specific public policies are needed to tackle the structural gender inequalities that cause, exacerbate or perpetuate women's  poverty.  On the one hand, society expects women to shoulder the burden of caregiving. The least that can be said regarding the resulting gender disparity is that women continue to devote more hours and days to this task than men. Not only does this limit the amount of time a woman is able to devote to training, retraining, employment or additional availability for work, but it also panders to gender stereotypes that tacitly assign to women a role on the labour market that takes second place to their family responsibilities, effectively excluding them from certain sectors, professions or posts. This leads to horizontal and vertical segregation at the workplace, and encourages gender inequalities on the labour markets and in the home to feed off each other. Similarly, women have always been and still are traditionally expected, as a matter of course, to perform certain tasks free of charge. As a result, such labour, where remunerated, can command only low wages and precarious conditions of employment, since the necessary skills, which have been acquired without formal training and have come to be regarded as the natural preserve of the female sex, are undervalued and inadequately remunerated.  Let us not forget that, although value and price are not synonymous, in market-based societies such as ours, value also means product quality, as measured by the amount of money or equivalent sacrifice required to obtain it.  A better distribution of caregiving services must also be accompanied by the upgrading of care-related occupations in a bid to achieve a more balanced distribution of time and work in the domestic and business spheres, which is essential in eliminating gender inequalities and combating the resulting structural poverty levels among females.

The commitment to quality social services and their universal availability is essential to ensure that resources can also be accessed by those living in households with low work intensity, mainly older women living alone or single mothers with dependent children.

Female poverty, which is heavily concentrated in households headed by single mothers, has a direct impact on those whose lives are most severely circumscribed by penury, namely children.  85% of single-parent families are headed by women[30] and, in 2020, 42.1% of the EU population living in single-parent households with dependent children were at risk of poverty or social exclusion[31].

The material conditions of each household, characterised by differing access to resources and lack of skills, feed off each other to generate an exponential increase in poverty levels, especially for children, effectively depriving them of any real opportunities in adult life.  Place of birth, family income, gender and disability are major factors in determining children's current well-being and later achievements in adult life. These also depend on economic conditions, public policies and the extent of welfare provision, together with prevailing social standards and gender attitudes.

Failure to develop skills in childhood cannot always be offset in adulthood and those concerned may remain affected by this for the rest of their lives. At the same time, poverty and inequality are neither inevitable nor the individual responsibility of each person.  Appropriate, comprehensive and coherent public policies are needed, particularly those directly affecting children and seeking to address structural gender inequalities.

The purpose of the European Child Guarantee, which has taken up the gauntlet thrown down by the European Parliament, is to ensure that every child at risk of poverty and social exclusion in Europe is given access to the most basic services, such as health and education. However, regardless of the size of its budget, this programme will be unable to achieve the expected transformations in the absence of specific action to tackle poverty among women and bring about other more far-reaching changes.

Violence against women is both a cause and a consequence of poverty and social exclusion suffered by them and notably increases the danger of them remaining unable to escape. Violence also infringes their fundamental rights and is, in many cases, motivated simply by the fact that the victims are women. Although the problem is not confined to those on low incomes, women from such social strata with limited resources have fewer channels of escape from domestic violence or violence at the hands of human traffickers, particularly those intent on their sexual exploitation.

If abused women are economically dependent on their partners, it is more difficult for them to escape the violence inflicted on them, their only recourse being the public welfare services, which differ widely from one Member State to another.  It must also be remembered that most women forced into prostitution come from impoverished backgrounds and are of migrant origin. They are therefore not legally entitled to residence, making them totally dependent on their abusers or on traffickers.

On the other hand, there are many women who lose their previous economic stability and fall into poverty and social exclusion as a direct result of violence inflicted on them.  According to an EAPN study[32], gender-based violence is the chief cause of homelessness for women in Europe.  Their resulting impoverishment and exclusion also affects their children, who do not enjoy protection as victims of gender-based violence in many countries. For this reason, we must ensure the full implementation of the Istanbul Convention, accompanied by effective measures to combat all forms of violence against women, including the creation of a new form of offence at the European level.

It is essential to promote structural changes in the fields of governance and taxation and to carry out effective gender mainstreaming.

On the one hand, we can observe an increase in primary inequality, with wages accounting for a smaller percentage of GDP, accompanied by increasingly lax labour legislation that is failing to keep pace with new forms of employment, such as platform work, thereby leaving millions of workers unprotected and at risk of poverty, including in-work poverty. In addition, the new technological revolution is currently placing hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk, while leaving most of the population without the skills required for the new jobs that will be created. Against this backdrop, gender equality at home and on the labour market is a long way off.

On the other hand, in order to guarantee equal access to basic services such as health, education and those relating to dependency, we must step up the redistributive capacity of individual countries and the effectiveness of welfare states. This will require adequate funding, which obviously depends in turn on fair and progressive taxation, something that is increasingly beyond our reach, given that the balance of power is tipped against us and fiscal justice is not being allowed to prevail.

This makes gender mainstreaming at every level of the EU budget process even more essential, ensuring that revenue and expenditure are translated into social investment to achieve gender equality objectives, such as measures to combat poverty among women. This directly relates to the need for a review of current economic and social governance, which, putting austerity aside, should be seeking to reduce gender inequalities and poverty levels among women.

OPINION OF THE COMMITTEE ON EMPLOYMENT AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS (4.3.2022)

for the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality

on women’s poverty in Europe

(2021/2170(INI))

Rapporteur for opinion (*): Dragoş Pîslaru

(*) Associated committee – Rule 57 of the Rules of Procedure

 

SUGGESTIONS

The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs calls on the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following suggestions into its motion for a resolution:

A. whereas the eradication of poverty is one of the priorities of the EU, enshrined in Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union and in Article 34 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and is a headline target in the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) action plan, reflecting the EU’s commitment to combat poverty in its policies;

B. whereas equality and non-discrimination are founding values of the European Union, as expressed in the Treaty on European Union and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union; whereas equality between men and women is an EU priority and is addressed at EU and national level in all policies; whereas in 2019, there were nearly 91.3 million persons at risk of poverty or social exclusion (AROPE) in the EU; whereas the EU did not reach its 2020 target to reduce AROPE by at least 20 million; whereas one of the new EU headline targets is to reduce AROPE by at least 15 million by 2030;

C. whereas, according to Eurostat, the risk of poverty and social exclusion in the EU was higher for women than for men in 2020, affecting 51.4 million women (22.9 %) compared to 45 million men (20.9 %)[33]; whereas this was primarily due to gender inequalities and discrimination, including in the labour market, experienced during the life course; whereas the poverty rate among working women could decrease if women were paid equally to men;

D. whereas women from more vulnerable groups, such as young women, women with disabilities, women with a migrant background, Roma women, women from religious or ethnic minorities, as well as LBTQI+ women, face additional and intersecting forms of discrimination when accessing education, healthcare, employment and social services, and are therefore exposed to a higher risk of poverty;

E. whereas gender mainstreaming is an important tool in the integration of gender equality into the EU’s policies related to labour market and social policies, in order to promote equal opportunities and combat all forms of discrimination against women;

F. whereas gender-sensitive data regarding poverty is still insufficient in the EU and the Member States, hindering the analysis and the policy-making processes at all levels;

G. whereas, in relation to poverty data, the statistical household unit defines poverty within households, and does not consider the gender inequalities in the internal distribution of resources, making it difficult to obtain reliable gender-disaggregated data;

H. whereas the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated existing inequalities and has had a severe impact on labour income and wealth, has aggravated the situation of people experiencing poverty and is halting improvements in AROPE; whereas support measures, such as short-time work or similar schemes, have cushioned to some extent the negative effects of the crisis in the short run; whereas the burden of the pandemic will be disproportionately borne by low-wage earners, which will increase poverty and inequality across Europe; whereas the full economic, employment and social consequences of the pandemic are still unknown; whereas gender mainstreaming in all aspects of the response to the COVID-19 crisis has to be fully implemented in order to ensure gender equality and to support the recovery for the most vulnerable women;

I. whereas the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated economic crisis have impacted women differently than men in the Union, and whereas its effects are jeopardising the progress made in the past few decades on the reduction of poverty and gender inequalities in the Member States; whereas according to the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), young women have been disproportionately hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with employment decreasing by more than 10 % for young women, compared to 2.4 % overall; whereas the pandemic has disproportionately affected women in the socio-economic sphere, has deepened existing discrimination and resulted in even more inequalities between women and men in the labour market; whereas more women than men have lost their jobs owing to the COVID-19 pandemic[34]; whereas according to Eurofound, low-paid female workers have been hit most by employment losses during the COVID-19 pandemic and were more likely to be on furlough[35]; whereas young women aged 18-34 have been most likely to lose their job in the wake of the pandemic (11 %, compared to 9 % of young men)[36]; whereas more women than men have reduced their working hours to ensure continued care for children and to provide for family members in need; whereas the COVID-19 crisis has increased the amount of unpaid housework and childcare, which has fallen mostly on women, creating a double burden for working mothers; whereas women are more at risk of COVID-19 infection owing to their over-representation in essential frontline and more exposed occupations;

J. whereas inequalities will continue to increase; whereas the medium-term impact of the crisis will depend on the degree of inclusiveness of the recovery; whereas social protection policies are vital elements of national development strategies to reduce poverty and vulnerability across the life cycle and to support inclusive and sustainable growth; whereas the recovery must include targeted strategies to support the most vulnerable and marginalised women in our societies in order to leave no one behind;

K. whereas women are over-represented in non-standard forms of work, including part-time work, and often work in precarious, underpaid or undervalued sectors, among frontline workers in the sectors hardest-hit by the pandemic; whereas the largest growth in female employment over the last decade has occurred in female-dominated jobs and jobs held mainly by women already, including in the healthcare sector; whereas 76 % of the workforce in the health and care sectors is female[37]; whereas Eurofound research shows that in spite of closing gender employment gaps, jobs are not becoming more gender mixed and that the share of EU employment in gender-mixed jobs (where neither gender’s share is greater than 60 %) declined from 27 % to 18 % between1998 and 2019[38]; whereas more women than men are in occupations that can be carried out remotely; whereas families are the cornerstone of our society, which requires a balance between professional and private life;

L. whereas women are over-represented among the informal carers who gave up their employment and provide care to elderly relatives or relatives with disabilities; whereas in many Member States they do not receive adequate support from the authorities and social security systems and are therefore at greater risk of poverty and social exclusion;

M. whereas pay discrimination in the EU, the unequal burden of unpaid care and domestic labour, discrimination in access to the labour market, low pay and low career prospects are barriers to achieving equal economic independence for women and men and can lead to higher risks of poverty and social exclusion for women, as well as higher gender pay and pension gaps; whereas poverty increases the risk of violence against women; whereas women faced with the risk of poverty are more vulnerable and violence increases the risk of social exclusion; whereas non-discriminative remuneration is an essential requisite for women; whereas women’s economic empowerment is key to achieve gender equality and combat women’s poverty;

N. whereas the overall employment rate of women is almost 12 % lower than that of men and one third of women who are employed work part-time, compared to 8 % of working men; whereas a fifth of the women living in poverty are not active in the labour market owing to caring and domestic responsibilities[39]; whereas the participation of women in the labour market has grown in the last few decades but several gender gaps still exist; whereas fewer women are in full time employment than men (48 % of women compared to 64 % of men) and marginalised women are even more excluded from full-time employment[40]; whereas only 20.7 % of women with disabilities and 28.6 % of men with disabilities are in full-time employment;

O. whereas in 2019, women’s gross hourly earnings were on average 14.1 % below those of men in the EU[41]; whereas women constitute the majority of minimum wage earners in Europe[42]; whereas the main contributing factors to the gender pay gap are the sectoral segregation of women and men, the prevalence of women in part-time employment and the fact that they are less likely to have supervisory responsibilities than their male counterparts; whereas the gender pay gap ranged between 20 % and 5 % across the EU[43];

P. whereas women in the EU aged over 65 received a pension that was on average 29 % lower than that of men[44]; whereas according to Eurofound’s research across the EU as a whole, between 2010 and 2019 the proportion of female pensioners aged over 65 who were at risk of poverty was around 3 to 4 percentage points higher than the rate for male pensioners; whereas poverty among those aged 75 and over is consistently concentrated among women, mainly as a result of the impact of gendered unpaid care duties, lifelong differences in pay and working time with the lower pensions that result, different retirement ages for men and women in some Member States, and the fact that more older women live alone; whereas effective actions are needed to close the gender employment, care, pay and pension gaps; whereas there is no country where gender equality has been fully achieved;

Q. whereas women may be especially affected by economic inequalities as a result of income disparities between men and women, owing to the low proportion of highly paid women, and to the fact that women’s income consists mainly of salaries and to a lesser extent capital income; whereas the risk of period poverty may also have a negative impact on the situation of women; whereas it is regrettable that female hygiene products and care products and services for children, elderly people or persons with disabilities, are still not considered as basic goods in all Member States;

R. whereas Eurofound has highlighted the importance of policies that promote gender balance in paid and unpaid care work, including parental leave policies that increase male participation in unpaid care work, as well as the improvement of pay and working conditions in female-dominated sectors such as care provision;

S. whereas gender equality in the labour market is an important instrument for eliminating poverty among women that benefits not only women but the economy as a whole, with a positive impact on GDP, employment levels and productivity; whereas improving gender equality would lead to an increase in EU GDP per capita of between 6.1 to 9.6 % and an additional 10.5 million jobs, which would benefit both women and men, by 2050[45];

T. whereas women’s experience of homelessness is differentiated by gender; whereas women suffer homelessness and precarious housing as a result of discrimination, poverty and gender-based violence;

U. whereas parental poverty often leads to child poverty; whereas investing in policies to support women also improves their families’ living conditions, in particular those of their children; whereas the EU and the Member States must respect, protect and fulfil the rights of children in line with the Treaty on European Union; whereas the rights of children are jeopardised in situations of poverty; whereas eradicating child poverty is included in Principle 11 of the EPSR;

V. whereas a significant section of the Roma population in Europe lives in extremely precarious conditions in both rural and urban areas, and in very poor socio-economic circumstances; whereas deep-rooted, permanent and structural anti-gypsyism, often institutionalised and governmental, continues to exist at all levels of European society, forming a significant barrier in all areas of life, including housing, education, healthcare and employment, which leads to poverty; whereas poverty is inherited, forcing the communities in question to face intergenerational difficulties;

W. whereas Roma people face discrimination in accessing employment initiatives such as the Youth Guarantee; whereas public employment services often lack the capacity to reach them or apply indirect discrimination practices;

X. whereas the digital and green transitions require action to ensure that no one is left behind; whereas women are under-represented at all levels in the digital and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) sectors in Europe and fewer women than men work in innovative technologies, such as artificial intelligence; whereas women account for only 34 % of STEM graduates and only 17 % of ICT specialists, while earning 19 % less than men in the information and communication sectors in Europe; whereas multiple gender gaps such as the so-called dream gap or the entitlement gap and a lack of women’s representation in leadership positions can affect girls’ career and education choices from an early age and therefore contribute to increasing inequality in certain sectors of the job market between men and women, in particular in STEM careers;

Y. whereas women, especially those living in rural areas, often have limited access to the education, training and digital skills improvement programmes that are essential for both transitions, providing them with the opportunity to continue their professional life successfully; whereas education, vocational training and lifelong learning are of the utmost importance for all;

1. Calls for an overarching European anti-poverty strategy that integrates the gender perspective, with ambitious targets for reducing poverty and homelessness and eradicating extreme poverty in Europe by 2030, building on the headline targets set out in the EPSR action plan, especially among children, with coherent measurements and a focus on breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty risks; calls on the Member States to fully implement the EPSR, with a special focus on the headline targets of a reduction of at least 15 million people at risk of poverty and social exclusion, of at least 78 % of the population aged 20-64 being in employment by 2030 and of at least 60 % of all adults participating in training every year; underlines that women’s poverty is closely linked to child poverty, that single-parent households are at greater risk of poverty and social exclusion and that those households are more likely to be headed by women; stresses that the root causes of poverty and its impact on children’s rights should be addressed in the strategy in order to ensure sustainable and long-lasting effects; calls for such a strategy to integrate an intersectional analysis and approach, and to set out targeted measures to support the most marginalised; underlines that low-income women, older women, women with disabilities, Roma women, women from religious or ethnic minorities, migrant women, young women, LBTIQ+ women and single mothers encounter greater inequalities than those which exist for women in general; stresses that all women, including those from minority and vulnerable groups, should benefit from the objectives and actions of the strategy; highlights that the strategy should be in line with the EU’s commitment towards Sustainable Development Goals 1, 5 and 10 and the 2030 Agenda;

2. Points out that, in order to prevent and tackle poverty among women, adequate national minimum income schemes are needed in all Member States as an integral part of an EU multidimensional, integrated anti-poverty strategy; takes note of the Commission’s commitment to propose a Council recommendation on minimum income in 2022; calls on the Commission to issue guidelines in the upcoming recommendation to ensure there is no discrimination in minimum income schemes, where such schemes exist, in order to break the poverty cycle of vulnerable families; underlines the need for Member States’ minimum income schemes to have a strong gender dimension to combat the feminisation of poverty and to guarantee a minimum income for those most at risk of exclusion; underlines the importance of minimum pensions and survivors’ pensions to tackle social exclusion and poverty among older women; stresses the importance of addressing the need to ensure decent minimum pensions in the planned Council recommendation on minimum income in 2022; calls on the Member States to further break down data regarding old-age pensions by gender and different age groups;

3. Recalls that the proposal on adequate minimum wages aims to reduce in-work poverty, in particular for women; calls for the swift adoption of the proposed directive that will allow for a decent standard of living for workers and their families; highlights that, given the higher proportion of women in low-wage jobs and sectors, improvements in the adequacy of minimum wages can not only reduce in-work poverty, but can also support gender equality and reduce the gender pay gap; calls on the Member States to prioritise and examine more systematically the in-work poverty rate in relation to gender and specific groups, and calls for them to foster employment security, reduce wage inequalities and address involuntary part-time work, countering discrimination in pay rates, including closing the gender pay gap, in order to ensure that decent work is a sustainable route out of poverty;

4. Stresses the need for Member States to implement well-designed labour market policies that aim to eradicate the gender gaps that put women at greater risk of poverty, in particular the gender employment, pay and pension gaps; calls on the Member States, not least through the European Semester, to build inclusive labour markets, with pathway approaches for vulnerable groups to quality jobs and employment, and with decent wages and social protection; highlights that while progress has been made, there are still gender inequalities in the labour market that have to be tackled; calls on the Commission to implement and closely monitor the key objectives set out in the Gender Equality Strategy through concrete actions; stresses the role of the social partners in efforts to reduce the gender employment, pay and pension gaps; welcomes the proposal for a pay transparency directive, which aims to strengthen the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms, thereby reducing the gender pay gap and improving women’s financial stability and economic independence more generally, as well as enabling affected women to escape poverty and situations of domestic violence; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure that any such proposal covers as many workers as possible without discrimination; stresses that women’s higher participation in the labour market should be focused on sustainable and quality employment, including in future-oriented sectors, in order to close the gender pay gap; stresses that the gender segregation of the labour market can undervalue feminised sectors and may lead to precarious working conditions for women in those sectors;

5. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to improve the opportunities for women in the labour market, to reduce the burden and responsibilities of women and actively support informal care providers, the majority of whom are women, by providing an adequate income for such carers, by increasing men’s take-up of caring responsibilities, by ensuring accessible and high-quality formal public and private childcare, especially for children under the age of three, and high-quality care and services for persons in need of care and support, including older persons and persons with disabilities, and by providing psycho-social support or relief services to informal carers; calls on the Member States to adequately fund better and more affordable quality public and private services, as well as to support not-for-profit social services and other social infrastructures, and to ensure access to essential services for women, and, if needed, for their dependent children and other members of the immediate family who need care or support, especially for vulnerable groups, as this would allow more women to participate in the labour market and ensure work-life balance, and would also contribute to reducing the risk of women and their dependents falling into poverty; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure that the EU legislation on gender equality with a direct impact on women’s participation in the labour market is implemented and its progress closely monitored;

6. Welcomes the Commission’s commitment to present a revision of the Barcelona targets on early childhood education and care in 2022; urges the Member States to speed up the process of reaching the Barcelona targets everywhere in the EU to enable women’s participation in the labour market, to prioritise the ambitious revision of the target of children under the age of three in childcare and to eliminate all discrimination in access to quality childcare by investing, while making use of the full potential of the European Child Guarantee and the relevant EU funds, in accessible and quality early childcare for all; recognises that efforts are needed to address the existing inequalities in access to quality early childhood education and care services; calls on the Member States to address the shortage of after school care and holiday childcare; calls on the Commission and the Council to develop similar targets for long-term care as part of the forthcoming European care strategy, including an initiative on long-term care in 2022, taking a comprehensive approach towards all care needs and services, and setting minimum standards and quality guidelines for care throughout the life cycle, to ensure sustainable long-term care that guarantees better access to quality services for those in need, as well as ensuring women’s continued participation in the labour market and addressing unequal caring responsibilities; highlights, furthermore, the need to adopt measures to encourage men to enter caring careers; calls on the European Council to unblock the Women on Boards Directive; stresses that seeing women represented in leadership roles can affect girls’ and young women’s school and career choices and contribute to ending inequalities in certain sectors of the job market where women are less represented, as well as improving the working conditions of feminised sectors;

7. Notes that measures to incentivise the employment of women through the equal involvement of men in caring responsibilities, such as, for example, effective paternity leave schemes and addressing the tax provisions which penalise secondary earners who are predominantly women, can contribute directly or indirectly to lowering gender gaps both in employment and wages; calls on the Member States to encourage an equal share of caring responsibilities between women and men through non-transferable paid leave periods between the parents, which would allow women to increasingly engage in full-time employment; calls on the Member States to ensure the rapid and ambitious implementation of the Work-Life Balance Directive;

8. Highlights that universal access to public, solidarity-based and adequate retirement and old-age pensions must be granted and accessible to all, particularly to women, as the average gender pension gap within the EU remains significant, standing at 29 % in 2019; underlines the importance of public and occupational pension systems that provide an adequate retirement income above the poverty threshold and allow pensioners to maintain their standard of living; calls on the Member States to consider factoring child-raising and other informal care responsibilities into pension schemes when women are not able to undertake paid work and make suitable contribution payments, including in the form of care credits, to address the fact that women are most often required to take career breaks to fulfil such responsibilities owing to entrenched gender roles; notes that the impact of the lifelong limited economic independence of women and gender inequalities in the labour market becomes most apparent among older age groups, especially if women are widowed or live alone; notes that the gender gap in poverty levels to the detriment of women is highest in the 75 and older age group, which is of particular concern given that women in the EU make up most of the ageing population;

9. Calls on the Member States to ensure equal economic opportunities for women during and after the COVID-19 crisis; stresses that the recovery efforts should take a gender-sensitive approach, invest in the care sector, boost quality jobs and sustainable growth, decent work, skills and training and the resilience and fairness of our societies, and should have a strong social dimension for all women, with an intersectional approach, to support women from more vulnerable groups, such as women in single or no-earner households, women with disabilities, Roma women, women from religious or ethnic minorities, single mothers, older women, migrant women, young women, LBTIQ+ women or women who care for dependents, as they are particularly at risk of falling into poverty and isolation; calls on the Member States to facilitate the formal recognition of the skills gained informally during periods of providing care, in order to improve the employability of women after their care duties end; underlines that while, overall, women encounter a higher likelihood of poverty throughout their life courses, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased this likelihood, as the lockdown measures to halt the pandemic have had a significant impact on the economic sectors (such as gastronomy, hospitality, retail, care, domestic work, etc.) in which women tend to be over-represented;

10. Notes that one of the areas in which women have been disproportionately affected vis-à-vis men is equal access to the economy, as women tend to be over-represented in Europe in the frontline of the pandemic and also in the services sector which has been particularly affected by the current crisis, and this has translated into an increase in female unemployment rates and thus a high likelihood of poverty for women in the EU;

11. Notes with concern that economic segregation and the disadvantages women face in entering and remaining on the labour market are translated into lower wages, vulnerable working conditions, lower pensions and a greater likelihood of suffering from poverty and social exclusion during the life course;

12. Calls on the Member States to promote flexibility for men, as well as for women, in terms of working hours and work organisation in order to promote the reconciliation of family life and work;

13. Underlines the need to promote policies that boost the economy, helping business owners to contribute to the growth of a labour market that creates decent jobs;

14. Stresses the crucial role of all European funds and programmes in the social area, particularly the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) and the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund for Displaced Workers, the Just Transition Fund, the Recovery and Resilience Facility and the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund; highlights that through the ESF+, Member States and the Commission should aim to mitigate the socio-economic impacts of the crisis, particularly on women, to increase the participation of women in employment as well the reconciliation of working and personal life, to combat the feminisation of poverty and gender discrimination in the labour market and in education and training, and to support the most vulnerable and combat child poverty; calls on the Member States to make full, effective and transparent use of these funds closest to the people who need them and therefore to consult and involve regional and local authorities in the application of the funds; further calls on the Member States to mainstream gender equality objectives throughout their national recovery and resilience plans and ensure that the most vulnerable groups of women are specifically targeted in the designing and planning of the national plans and in the implementation of funded projects; reminds the Member States that all EU-funded projects must comply with EU law, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights, as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; echoes the Commission’s prediction that, in the context of recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak, fighting against extreme poverty, and especially tackling child poverty, will become even more important in the coming years; consequently, insists that a total of at least EUR 20 billion be invested in the European Child Guarantee in the period 2021-2027; calls on the Member States to make full use of the ESF+, in particular the funds available to support the most deprived persons, in order to address the forms of extreme poverty with the greatest social exclusion impact, such as homelessness, child poverty and food deprivation;

15. Stresses that women not only disproportionately lost their jobs at the onset of the pandemic, but they also encountered greater obstacles to re-entering and remaining on the labour market in the period between the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and, while employment prospects rose by 1.4 % for men, they merely increased by 0.8 % for women during the same period; stresses that young people, especially young women, lost disproportionately more jobs during the first wave of the pandemic; notes that previous crises have shown that entering the labour market during a recession can negatively affect young people’s labour market outcomes for a decade or more;

16. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to encourage the labour market participation of women, while ensuring progressiveness in the tax system, eliminating tax-related gender biases and other inequalities, submitting specific, targeted and measurable initiatives within funding programmes, in line with the Commission’s recommendation on Effective Active Support to Employment, and to promote women’s empowerment through accessible and inclusive formal, non-formal and informal education, vocational training and lifelong learning, with specific attention to be paid to the most marginalised, as well as access to finance, female entrepreneurship and women’s representation in future-oriented sectors, with a view to ensuring access to high-quality employment and decent working and employment conditions across all age groups; calls on the Member States to implement policies that contribute to the skilling, up-skilling and re-skilling of women, especially with regard to the green and digital transitions; calls for the EU and the Member States to support women’s access to quality lifelong learning and training, particularly after periods of absence for care reasons, taking strong measures to overcome the lack of time and resources as well as the digital gap; calls for greater promotion of STEM subjects, digital education, vocational training, lifelong learning, artificial intelligence and financial literacy as well as other cross-cutting skills at all education levels in order to ensure that more women enter future-oriented sectors and contribute to their development as well as to that of society more generally; calls on the Member States to use EU funds and programmes to support lifelong learning and training in the specific areas of new digital skills and capacities, including, in particular, STEM subjects; stresses that female entrepreneurship is of added value and should be supported and promoted;

17. Calls on the Member States to be ambitious in their implementation of the European Child Guarantee and the Pay Transparency Directive, as well as the future Directive on Minimum Wages and Recommendation on Minimum Income;

18. Emphasises that national efforts to ensure Roma inclusion should be accelerated in all Member States; calls on the Commission to promote inclusion and thereby ensure the participation of Roma girls and women at all levels, including those working at local, regional and EU level; points out that this should take into account equality between men and women and focus on the elevation of Member States’ good practices to Union level;

19. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to supplement the EU’s financial aid with study programmes and projects that give talented Roma girls and women the opportunity to use continuing education to free themselves from intergenerational poverty, promoting their social integration and developing their knowledge, with a view to improving the situation of the Roma; calls on the Member States to indicate the level of support they would need in order to implement the recommended measures to integrate the Roma population;

20. Recalls that narrow definitions of homelessness exclude women experiencing homelessness and housing exclusion, as they use informal and often unsafe arrangements, such as rough sleeping and emergency accommodation, and only try to access homelessness support services when those other options have been exhausted; points out that, as a result, women are not taken into account and are underestimated in the data on homelessness rates and therefore their experiences and needs are overlooked;

21. Points out that women are particularly exposed to the housing crisis; emphasises that women’s homelessness is often less visible, and that it needs to be specifically addressed; calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop a gendered approach in their National Homelessness Strategies in order to support women experiencing homelessness, who have often suffered complex trauma and face re-traumatisation, such as through domestic violence and abuse, separation from their children, stigmatisation and the lack of safe and secure spaces; calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop a gendered approach in their housing policies, particularly by supporting women who face specific situations such as single parenthood;

22. Welcomes the establishment of the European Platform on Combating Homelessness and its person-centred, housing-led and integrated approach; asks that it implement gender mainstreaming throughout its work, include women’s rights organisations and carry out a study on the situation of homelessness affecting women in Europe;

23. Highlights that the European Green Deal and the Just Transition have to pay particular attention to energy poverty, increasing public investment in social, affordable and energy-efficient housing;

24. Underlines the gender dimension of energy poverty, which disproportionately affects single women, single-parent and female-headed households, as well as the need to pay attention to the specific situation of women when analysing the increasing risk of inequalities and poverty deriving from climate policies; points out the need to better take account of gender justice in the field of housing and urban renewal; reiterates its call on the Commission and the Member States to establish a definition of energy poverty which takes the gendered aspects of the phenomenon into account, as well as to ensure more ambitious action to tackle energy poverty[46]; calls, in this context, for the Member States to report on the gender dimension of energy poverty in their National Energy and Climate Plans;

25. Calls on the Member States to eliminate taxes on sanitary products, which disproportionately jeopardise the dignity of lower-income women; deeply regrets the fact that in spite of the proposed changes to VAT rules in 2018, a number of Member States have not reduced VAT rates for sanitary products;

26. Notes that all Member States have increased care packages during the pandemic and introduced special provisions for single-parent households; urges the Member States to extend such provisions during the recovery period;

27. Believes it to be important for gender policies to address the gender imbalance in both paid and unpaid care work, to increase women’s participation in male-dominated sectors and to promote men’s employment in female-dominated sectors, in order to address gender segregation in employment; emphasises that the persistence of gender-based job segregation suggests that more needs to be done via education and training systems and other incentives to encourage young men and women to engage in occupations identified with the other gender;

28. Regrets the fact that the current poverty data reveals only a part of the gender gap, as at-risk-of-poverty indicators are measured through household data which do not reveal the intra-household distribution of and access to resources; reiterates its calls on the Commission and the Member States to further develop and improve the collection of gender-disaggregated data, statistics, research and analysis, as well as support for and measures to improve institutional and civil society organisations’ capacity-building as regards data collection and analysis; calls in particular on the EU Energy Poverty Observatory to provide gender-disaggregated data in its publicly accessible set of indicators;

29. Recalls that social distancing and quarantine as a result of COVID-19 have had a dramatic impact on the number of cases of violence against women, including increased incidences of domestic violence and child abuse; recalls that women’s economic independence has been proven to be a key tool for tackling gender-based violence; calls, therefore, on the Commission and the Member States to provide financial support for women victims of gender-based violence moving to independent living, and enhanced access to information on funding for affordable housing, as ways to improve their economic independence and standard of living.

INFORMATION ON ADOPTION IN COMMITTEE ASKED FOR OPINION

Date adopted	3.3.2022
Result of final vote	+: –: 0:	41 8 4
Members present for the final vote	Atidzhe Alieva-Veli, Dominique Bilde, Gabriele Bischoff, Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, Milan Brglez, Sylvie Brunet, Jordi Cañas, David Casa, Leila Chaibi, Ilan De Basso, Margarita de la Pisa Carrión, Özlem Demirel, Jarosław Duda, Estrella Durá Ferrandis, Lucia Ďuriš Nicholsonová, Rosa Estaràs Ferragut, Nicolaus Fest, Loucas Fourlas, Cindy Franssen, Helmut Geuking, Elisabetta Gualmini, Alicia Homs Ginel, France Jamet, Agnes Jongerius, Radan Kanev, Ádám Kósa, Stelios Kympouropoulos, Katrin Langensiepen, Miriam Lexmann, Elena Lizzi, Giuseppe Milazzo, Kira Marie Peter-Hansen, Dragoş Pîslaru, Manuel Pizarro, Dennis Radtke, Elżbieta Rafalska, Guido Reil, Daniela Rondinelli, Mounir Satouri, Monica Semedo, Michal Šimečka, Beata Szydło, Eugen Tomac, Romana Tomc, Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, Nikolaj Villumsen, Marianne Vind, Maria Walsh, Stefania Zambelli, Tatjana Ždanoka
Substitutes present for the final vote	Evelyn Regner, Eugenia Rodríguez Palop, Sara Skyttedal

 

 

FINAL VOTE BY ROLL CALL IN COMMITTEE ASKED FOR OPINION

41	+
NI	Daniela Rondinelli
PPE	David Casa, Jarosław Duda, Rosa Estaràs Ferragut, Loucas Fourlas, Cindy Franssen, Helmut Geuking, Radan Kanev, Stelios Kympouropoulos, Dennis Radtke, Sara Skyttedal, Eugen Tomac, Romana Tomc, Maria Walsh
Renew	Atidzhe Alieva-Veli, Sylvie Brunet, Jordi Cañas, Lucia Ďuriš Nicholsonová, Dragoş Pîslaru, Monica Semedo, Michal Šimečka, Marie-Pierre Vedrenne
S&D	Gabriele Bischoff, Vilija Blinkevičiūtė, Milan Brglez, Ilan De Basso, Estrella Durá Ferrandis, Elisabetta Gualmini, Alicia Homs Ginel, Agnes Jongerius, Manuel Pizarro, Evelyn Regner, Marianne Vind
The Left	Leila Chaibi, Özlem Demirel, Eugenia Rodríguez Palop, Nikolaj Villumsen
Verts/ALE	Katrin Langensiepen, Kira Marie Peter-Hansen, Mounir Satouri, Tatjana Ždanoka

 

8	-
ECR	Giuseppe Milazzo, Margarita de la Pisa Carrión, Elżbieta Rafalska, Beata Szydło
ID	Dominique Bilde, Nicolaus Fest, France Jamet, Guido Reil

 

4	0
ID	Elena Lizzi, Stefania Zambelli
NI	Ádám Kósa
PPE	Miriam Lexmann

 

Key to symbols:

+ : in favour

- : against

0 : abstention

 

 

 

INFORMATION ON ADOPTION IN COMMITTEE RESPONSIBLE

Date adopted	16.6.2022
Result of final vote	+: –: 0:	22 0 3
Members present for the final vote	Isabella Adinolfi, Annika Bruna, Maria da Graça Carvalho, Margarita de la Pisa Carrión, Lina Gálvez Muñoz, Alice Kuhnke, Karen Melchior, Andżelika Anna Możdżanowska, Maria Noichl, Sandra Pereira, Pina Picierno, Evelyn Regner, Diana Riba i Giner, María Soraya Rodríguez Ramos, Christine Schneider, Sylwia Spurek
Substitutes present for the final vote	Michiel Hoogeveen, Ewa Kopacz, Aušra Maldeikienė, Predrag Fred Matić, Silvia Modig, Monika Vana
Substitutes under Rule 209(7) present for the final vote	Marek Paweł Balt, Milan Brglez, Maria Walsh

 

 

FINAL VOTE BY ROLL CALL IN COMMITTEE RESPONSIBLE

22	+
ECR	Andżelika Anna Możdżanowska
PPE	Isabella Adinolfi, Maria da Graça Carvalho, Ewa Kopacz, Aušra Maldeikienė, Christine Schneider, Maria Walsh
Renew	Karen Melchior, María Soraya Rodríguez Ramos
S&D	Marek Paweł Balt, Milan Brglez, Lina Gálvez Muñoz, Predrag Fred Matić, Maria Noichl, Pina Picierno, Evelyn Regner
The Left	Silvia Modig, Sandra Pereira
Verts/ALE	Alice Kuhnke, Diana Riba i Giner, Sylwia Spurek, Monika Vana

 

0	-

 

3	0
ECR	Michiel Hoogeveen, Margarita de la Pisa Carrión
ID	Annika Bruna

 

Key to symbols:

+ : in favour

- : against

0 : abstention

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