The European Parliament currently has 31 % of the seats filled with female MEPs. This figure made Commission Vice-President Margot Wallström recently question the representativeness of this potentially most democratic European institution: “Women account for 52% of the EU population. They must have equal representation. How can we speak of representative democracy when half the population is under-represented?”.
“When men say they cannot find a suitable women, I would say: you should have your eyes checked.”
With the elections for Parliament only one month away, this is the time to finally achieve a 50/50 representation in the hemicycle. In order to achieve this, it would help if more women would vote and that they would vote for a woman. But would that do the trick? To start, we would also need a good representation of women on the voting lists. A glance at the lists of the seven Dutch parties that are currently represented in the European Parliament, however, does not lead to much optimism: only two parties have a woman as a frontrunner….
Support the 50/50 campaign
Dutch Commission Kroes is equally pessimistic. She would like to see two of the six top positions that will or have been opened this year on EU (President of the European Commission, EP-President, High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and in case the Lisbon Treaty enters into force, President of the European Council) and NATO-level occupied by a woman but said this week: “You need to have about eternal life before half of the politicians is a woman”. Assuming the 67-years old Commissioner does not have eternal life, wouldn’t it not be nice she would actually be able to witness equal representation in her lifetime? Kroes said to find it strange that there are not even women in the picture for the position of EP President: “When men say they cannot find suitable women, I would say: you should have your eyes checked”. The link to the interview is here for those who read Dutch.
If you want to support this cause, sign the “Females in Front” petition that is about the four different leaders of the European Union that will be appointed during the next 12 months only (not about NATO). The humble aim of this campaign is that one of them should at least be a woman.
You can also sign the 50/50 petition that aims at getting women on those high EU-posts as well but is also about “putting pressure right now on all national political parties and require them to ensure the equal representation and ranking of women and men on their electoral lists and to include gender equality as a priority in their programmes.”
“The reason why women have not yet achieved equality, despite the fact that they have been trying for decades, is the idea that they can do it by themselves, that they do not need men.”
Women’s Rights Committee Chair Anna Záborská recently gave us an explanation for this male-domination: “The reason why women have not yet achieved equality, despite the fact that they have been trying for decades, is the idea that they can do it by themselves, that they do not need men.”
In order to achieve the 50/50 representation we indeed need the help of men. They are certainly not unwilling or unintersted as a Eurobarometer poll showed in February that 83% of women and 76% of men agree that women can bring a different perspective to politics. So we can gently ask them to vote for a woman but will it be enough?
Perhaps men do need an incentive and we can learn something from the women’s rights movement in Kenya who announced on 1 May to boycot sex for a week in order to enforce better rights (today they will be able to take stock). The sad situation of women in Kenya cannot be compared to the situation of women in the European Union, but we may copy some of their good action practices and… improve them on the way…..
So, tell your bed partner as a little reminder that if on election night it seems there will be no equal representation of women in the European Parliament, there will be no sex during the whole summer (until the next elections would be better but that may have devastating consequences for Europe’s gloomy demographic crunch) .
And finally a plea to the 368 male MEPs that will be elected for the next term: follow in the footsteps of MEPs Raül Romeva i Rueda , Giovanni Rivera and Konrad Szymański : elect twenty lucky devils among yourselves to join the Women’s Rights and Gender Equality committee. They have plenty of work!
With thanks to Lena and Raffaella for their suggestions.
P.S. Still have not read enough about this topic. Go here, even if it were only to check out the great illustration
Dear group of Europeans, I did not know of your existence until 5 minutes ago, but yesterday I wrote this letter, and I would like somebody to read it. Good luck to all of us in this endeavor…
please don’t use my last name, all of this does not require any glory,
Thanks, Tina
Dear Michelle,
Thank you, for being so courageous, generous and brave in your life. I know most women are. Thank you for giving up your normal life for all of us.
I am writing to make a couple of suggestions of movies for your movie nights with your girlfriends.
Movie N: 1 “Slumdog Millionaire” in watching it, focus should be made only in the two women in the movie (the mother and the girlfriend) and see what happen to the children in a world run by men only.
Movie N: 2 “Revolutionary Road” (book written 1962) while watching focus on this movie should be made in the choice the woman ( Kate Winslet’s) makes at the end of the movie.
Than the audience you have invited should have an open discussion on why movie N: 1 had so much success and Movie N: 2 so much silence.
The audience should include: Hillary Rodham, the new President of NOW and definitely Joe Biden’s wife, she is such feminist! ( reference to a very humiliating comment she made on Oprah about Hillary Rodham).
Dear Michelle, you are raising two daughters, I am raising one and personally after I have spent my life becoming a strong and knowledgeable woman, I am always upset in seeing how little choices women in the world still have.
And then I read the boring platform of NOW and I say HELLOOO,
always the same stuff: we can be more creative than that: NOW.
We want EQUAL REPRESENTATION.
Let’s not go and comment on the Iran’s elections and see those courageous, lonely women fighting for a wrong election where they feel cheated. I feel cheated (and I have cheated them in my free world) at every election because I voted for boring old and young white men that don’t do anything for women.
My inspiration in my twenties was Virginia Woolf.
When I read her books “A Room of One’s Own” , “Three Guinea” and the rest of her books, they were the answers to some of my mental needs, but we know how her life ended….
We instead are still alive and have a choice, we have to give choices to our daughters. ENOUGH with the silence to protects the men in our life. We keep loving them, we give them life, but they have not reciprocated for centuries.
It is time for them to grow up, for us to request accountability as fathers, husband, sons, brothers and friends. Lets ask them to stop cheating on us, but also let’s ask some women to stop cheating to themselves and on other women.
Your husband got the message; I hear it in every speech that he gives. Nevertheless at the end of the day, we know historically, he will get all the credit and visibility and not you or your mother. As for most of the women that have voted for him (in the primary and after) in reality just wanted to offer themselves to him as a better choices than you.
I would have voted for you, you were my candidate, but you had to take care of the children. So we had Hillary (my vote in the primary) she learned and played the rules of the world of men, did her homework and look how far she went…
Do not think even for a second that I was not ready for a minority president. I was ready for Jessie Jackson, I was ready to cross party line for Colin Powell and I voted for Obama after Hillary failure.
I read (in the part of the world where I am from) “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” when I was in second grade ( I am 53 now) and I did not need to review the issue any other time in my life.
NOW It is the time for men to grow up and share the burden of our private life “neither them or us can do it alone” (how do you like the quote?) and let us share the responsibility and visibility of public life, because until we keep doing all the work in silence inside our little houses, and they mess up in the big house that is our planet, our daughters will not have freedom of choice.
I am very sorry for my English but as you may have understood, English is not my first language. I am a very private person and I don’t want any attention toward me, it is not about me, but if privately you think after reviewing this letter you need more help in understanding, I am available. And if you want to know where I am from please read the following excerpts of Virginia Woolf.
With a lot of love, Tina
Excerpts from Three Guineas (1931); (on war)
Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or “our” country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect either myself or my country. “For,” the outsider will say, “in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.”-Ch.
[...] the original post here: Writing for (y)EU | No equal representation? No sex! Tags: 100-million | business | charges-involving | faces-125 | kenya | obama | president-george | [...]
RT @Tayebot: New post by Hanneke: "No equal representation? No sex!" http://bit.ly/fJMfN
#eu09
New post by Hanneke: “No equal representation? No sex!” http://bit.ly/fJMfN
#eu09