Cohesion policy must address the issues of gender
equality and women's participation in the labour
market, which are crucial to envisage greater
economic and social cohesion in Europe. This is the
call included in an opinion drafted by Donatella
Porzi, Regional Councillor for the Region of Umbria
(Italy), which was adopted by the plenary of the
European Committee of the Regions (CoR) on 2
December. Local and regional leaders consider of
paramount importance for the gender perspective
also to be incorporated into the national recovery
and resilience plans.
During the plenary debate on
the opinion on the gender dimension of
structural and cohesion funds 2021-27
, members of the CoR stressed the importance of gender
equality to pursue economic, social and territorial
cohesion in Europe. Gender equality should be thus a
cross-cutting criterion for the drawing-up of cohesion
policy programmes, a goal to be pursued by the
programmes, and a powerful factor that is necessary to
achieve cohesion policy's sustainable and balanced
development.
The rapporteur
Donatella Porzi
(IT/PES), Regional Councillor for the Region of Umbria,
said: "
Cohesion policy is supposed to reduce regional
economic and social disparities, but what does it
do to reduce gender inequality? In the context of
the EU’s post-pandemic recovery, it is crucial to
find concrete tools to promote gender equality to
help our society as a whole. Cohesion funds can
have a concrete impact when it comes to improving
childcare policies, supporting female
entrepreneurship or promoting women's participation
in the labour market in rural areas, just to name a
few. A just transition must start from here
."
Monika Vana
(AT/GREEN), Member of the European Parliament and
rapporteur on the gender dimension of cohesion policy,
joined the debate during the plenary.
CoR members underline that cohesion policy and the ways
operational programmes are set up can make a particular
contribution to a real increase in equality between men
and women, with regard to the volume of funding and its
nature and targeting. Therefore, they call for the
contribution to gender equality not to be considered a
prerogative of the
European Social Fund
alone, but as coming from all the funds. This includes
the fund for regional development (
ERDF
) and the one for agriculture and rural development (
EAFRD
), where the issue of gender equality and women's
participation in the labour market is often more
pronounced.
Local and regional leaders recommend that the
authorities managing European programmes for 2021-27
develop projects and measures aimed at promoting gender
equality, such as support work-life balance and
encourage the reintegration of women who have lost
their jobs because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This
crisis hit indeed particularly hard sectors employing a
high number of women, such as health care and child
care, thus exacerbating gender inequalities.
Finally, CoR members consider of paramount importance
for the gender perspective also to be incorporated into
the
Next Generation EU
national recovery plans, and the principles and tools
for gender assessment applied to the main projects.
As a first step, the European Commission is planning to
present next year a new methodology for assessing the
impact on gender equality of a number of EU funded
programmes which are directly managed by the Commission
itself. The initiative does not include, for the
moment, cohesion policy's programmes, but could be
enlarged to all shared management programmes at a later
stage.
Background:
On 24 November the CoR's Commission for the
Environment, Climate change and Energy (ENVE) adopted a
draft opinion entitled "
Gender equality and Climate change: towards
mainstreaming the gender perspective in the
European Green Deal
" (rapporteur: Kata Tüttő, HU, PES). The text will be
voted by the Plenary in January 2022.
In the opinion "
A Union of Equality: Gender Equality Strategy
2020-2025
" (rapporteur: Concepción Andreu Rodríguez, ES, PES),
the CoR “
asks the EU institutions, including the Committee
of the Regions, to adopt codes of conduct favouring
the participation of women and men on equal terms
with regard to composition and leadership
positions, with the ultimate aim being gender
parity between CoR members
."
The CoR as EU body has adopted a gender strategy in
2018 that is being updated on regular basis. In March
2018, the CoR Bureau adopted a “no male-only panel
policy for own, hosted and co-organised events and
conferences.”
All the information on the CoR's activity to promote
gender balance at local and regional level can be found
here
.
Contact:
Matteo Miglietta
Tel. +32 (0)470 895 382
matteo.miglietta@cor.europa.eu