Verbatim report of proceedings

Monday, 4 July 2022 - Strasbourg

Women’s poverty in Europe (debate)

  Billy Kelleher (Renew). – Madam President, I welcome the broad thrust of the report, but there’s no doubt we have a long way to go in terms of working conditions and gender pay equality. At the outset, a lot of our legislation is weak in these particular areas to defend and vindicate the rights of women, but equally in terms of access to education, access to credit, access to housing, access to health and reproductive rights. These are all issues that are contingent on Member States either giving or not giving, and they should be mandatory obligations at this stage in terms of certain guarantees and fundamental rights.

So when we talk about education, young women with a number of children are unable to access further education, in many cases. They are unable to access proper housing provision. They are unable to access the workplace simply because their conditions are not protected in legislation. So when we talk about equality, when we talk about the gender pay gap, we do have obligations in this House; but, equally, Member States – where the competency still lies in many areas around legislation on employment – have a lot to do and we should hold them accountable equally across the European Union.