THE new EU programme on equality will concentrate on bringing more women into the labour market, according to the EU Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, Mr Padraig Flynn.
Mr Flynn told a seminar in Dublin yesterday on the EU Fourth Action Programme on Equal Opportunities that European employment levels for women were still lower than in the US or Japan.
"According to the latest figures available, the average unemployment rate for women in the Union is 12.3 per cent as opposed to 9.3 per cent for men.
The funding earmarked for the European equality projects was criticised by the head of the European Parliament's Women's Rights Committee.
Ms Lissy Groner MEP said she "got angry when I hear that billions of ecus were found for BSE and they were able to magic that money out of a hat." Ms Groner told the seminar it was up to women to lobby for more funding, not from equality ministers, but from the finance ministers who would finalise spending.
The new programme has an annual budget of nine million ecus (an estimated £7 million) for administration and has allocated 4.3 million ecus to projects this year.
Between 1989 and 1993 only 5 per cent of the European Social Fund had been given to women's projects, Ms Groner said. The women's lobby had asked for 600,000 ecus and had been granted 100,000 ecus.
Opening the seminar in Dublin Castle yesterday the Minister for Equality and Law Reform, Mr Taylor, said equality should be a key element in the new draft treaty.
He said progress had been made in Ireland. In the three years since the Government introduced a 40 per cent quota for female appointments to State boards the proportion has risen from 17 to 35 per cent. And 80 per cent of the 211 recommendations by the second Commission on the Status of Women had been or were in the process of being implemented.
He said improving access to work for women would mean a "whole new social contract".
He argued that equality issues should be taken into account on all European policy decisions although, he said, it has not been easy "to convince some heads of Commission departments that their particular policy has anything to do with equal opportunities."
He said efforts had been made to increase the proportion of Structural Funds given to "projects of interest to women". But these operations were "still of relatively modest proportions
The Commission had called for projects earlier this year, Mr Flynn said, and received a "torrent of applications". The fourth programme would use a more streamlined approach, replacing nine equality networks with two networks - one to look at legal issues and the other at gender and employment.
The ICTU assistant general secretary, Ms Patricia O Donovan, told delegates that 82 per cent of part time workers in the EU were women. A 1995 Employment in Europe report showed that one in five new jobs were part time or temporary. And women filled 95 per cent of these part time jobs in the three years between 1987 and 1990. "We are watching a major restructuring which is pushing women into a twilight zone of employment which leaves them in poverty and without protection.
The Swedish Minister for Equality Affairs, Ms Ulrica Messing, told delegates that while the majority of Swedish women work the male norm still prevailed. Sweden had become a two bread winner society", she said, and the unemployment level among women was lower than among men.
Sweden had introduced separate income taxation for women and men and put in the infrastructure to allow people to combine work with parental responsibilities. Maternity and paternity leave, child care facilities and a right to shorter working hours when children were younger had all helped to create opportunities for women.
