European Womens Lobby – campaign promoting equality in EU elections
The European Women’s Lobby (EWL) mobilizes for the upcoming European elections in May 2014 and has launched a campaign called 50/50 aiming to promote more women elected in the European Parliament and to raise awareness on the issue of equality of women and men.
As part of this campaign a conference called “My MEP is just like me? was organized on the 18th of February in the European Parliament. Many stakeholders from different professional and political backgrounds attended and contributed with their expertise on this issue. They recalled the importance of bringing more women into the Parliament and the importance of taking into account both female and male citizens since this is a matter of democracy.
EWL has also stressed the impact of austerity measures on gender equality. This issue was made an important part of the campaign and illustrated in the following video:
video
The conference also provided a discussion on different obstacles to women’s participation in political life and in particular their involvement in the European elections: lack of promotion of equality in political parties, lack of binding measures to increase the number of women in representative bodies , cultural factors etc. Several solutions were also brought up: the establishment of mentoring programs for women candidates, the effectiveness of quotas and the need to engage men in the work for equality.
In the European Parliament only 35% of MPs are women, a lot of work still remains to be done to achieve more parity but as stated by the participants in the conference, solutions do exist, it is a matter of mobilizing!
For further information about the campaign please visit this link.
