After years of debates, reports, national and European initiatives, one question remains: Does gender equality is really effective in European Union countries?

A public hearing to report and recommend actions and initiatives for the new EU gender strategy was organised by the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality of the European Parliament, on the 28th of January. The reports responsible, Ilda Figueiredo, listened carefully to a wide range of opinions of experts in this area.

Latest statistics still show the important differences between men and women in terms of employment, and prove that there was a decrease in women’s employment conditions in the last five years. 9% of European women were unemployed in 2009, against 7.8 for men. Distribution in part-time jobs is even more unequal:  in 2008, one working woman out of 3 was a part time worker, against one working man out of 20 in Europe. This situation conducts, therefore, to an ever growing discrepancy between men’s and women’s incomes, and, consequently, to poverty augment among the female gender.

As the conditions are different from state to state, Marisa Soleto, President of Fundacao Mujeres, proposes the share of best practices among countries: “the European organizations should work in coordination and men should be present and contribute in all tasks, but all of this should be previously regarded within the legislation.”

The crisis deepens inequalities, and several members of the panel stressed the need to help European women, particularly touched by economical problems.  “We have to ensure womens independence, we need equality in itself, more than just equality in growth and jobs”, said Myria Vassiliadou, General Secretary of the European Women's Lobby. Under the poverty and social exclusion problematic should exist a stronger focus in immigration, integration and asylum matters, besides the decision-making and other economical issues.

Marina Yannakoudakis, member of the European Parliament, questioned “where do we go from here? It is important that we can arrive where we want, having the education and the job we’ve chosen, and, that is equality!”

The new European strategy will have, thus, to cover a wide range of issues: economic inequality between men and women, access to instruction, employment and political life, effective access to medical and social care, especially for pregnant women, and social exclusion problems, related to immigration and asylum.