27 Amendments of Anna HEDH related to 2015/2228(INI)

Motion for a resolution
Recital C

C. whereas living at risk of poverty translates into social exclusion in terms of access to public transport, primary healthcare services, decent housing, information and culture;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Recital D

D. whereas the gender pay gap stands at 16.3 % and whereas the atypical and ~~flexible~~uncertain forms of working contracts (zero hour contracts, temporary work, interim jobs etc.) also affect women more than men; whereas these insecure contracts put women at greater risk of poverty and result in a category of the 'working poor' being created;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Recital E

E. whereas women often take the responsibility for the care of elderly or ill family members as well as for children, resulting in their lower participation in the labour market, which consequently diminishes their overall income; whereas the establishment of high-quality childcare services and facilities at affordable prices reduces the risk of impoverishment; whereas few Member States have achieved or surpassed the Barcelona objectives which must be seen as a necessity in order to increase an equal share of responsibility between caretakers;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Recital E

E. whereas women often take the responsibility for the care of elderly or ill family members as well as for children, resulting in their lower participation in the labour market, which consequently diminishes their overall income; whereas the establishment of high-quality ~~child~~early childhood education and care services and facilities at affordable prices reduces the risk of impoverishment; whereas few Member States have achieved or surpassed the Barcelona objectives;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Recital G

G. whereas the pension gap averages 40% as a result of the pay gap between women and men; whereas this pension gap represents an obstacle to women's economic independence and is one of the reasons why women find themselves falling below the poverty line as they grow older;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Recital H

H. whereas the increasing risk of poverty is closely linked to budget cuts in education, social security systems and care services; whereas women and child have been hardest hit by the crisis and the austerity measures taken in several European countries;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Recital I

I. whereas the stereotypes widely conveyed by society contribute to the feminisation of poverty; whereas these stereotypes are developed during childhood and are reflected in the choice of training and education and on into the labour market; whereas women are still too often confined to ‘women-friendly’ tasks and remain under-represented in certain areas such as mathematics, science, engineering, and so on; whereas these stereotypes in combination with male dominated sectors being normative in setting wages lead to discrimination in terms of recrimination;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1

1. Notes that the lack of affordable high- quality care, whether for children or for the sick or elderly, contributes to social exclusion, to the gender employment gap, the pay gap and the related pension gap; emphasises that equal access to ~~child~~early childhood education and care, and free, high-quality education and family support services is central to securing equal opportunities and breaking poverty cycles;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2

2. Calls on the Member States and the Commission to develop and utilise the available policy and financial instruments, including the Social Investment Package, to meet the Barcelona objectives; calls, in this context, for the Social Fund and the ERDF to be improved, for priority to be given, in the use of social investments and the EFSI regulation, to the establishment of public and private childcare facilities, and for the flexibility mechanism introduced in the context of the Stability and Growth Pact to be used for financing of ~~childcare facilities~~early childhood education and care (ECEC); proposes the creation of a specific line in the EU budget to fund, through a co- financing mechanism, incentives for specific areas where there is a shortage of ~~childcare~~ECEC facilities and where the female employment rate is extremely low;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Mary HONEYBALL, Anna HEDH, Julie WARD, Soraya POST, Sophia IN 'T VELD, Malin BJÖRK, Terry REINTKE, Ernest URTASUN

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 a (new)

2a. Highlights that the lack of recognition of LGBTI families by many Member States, most notably by unequal marriage or partnership laws and parental recognition laws, results in lower incomes and higher costs for LGBTI people, increasing the risk of poverty and social exclusion;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3

3. Calls on the Commission to undertake a comprehensive and global legislative action to modernise in a coherent way the types of leave, namely maternity, paternity, parental and carers’ leave, so as to boost women’s participation in the labour market; underlines the fact that only 2.7 percent of the persons using their right of parental leave were men in 2010 which emphasises the need for concrete action for non-transferable parental leave rights;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5

5. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to implement policies to promote the employment of women and the integration into the labour market of socially marginalised groups of women, in the light of the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy, with an emphasis on life- long learning, the development of affordable and high-quality public care services, ~~flexible~~the abolishment of precarious working time arrangements and measures to combat the segregation of men and women by occupation and sector;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6

6. Notes that women are disproportionately and often involuntarily concentrated in precarious work; urges the Member States to consider implementing the International Labour Organisation (ILO) recommendations intended to reduce the scale of precarious work, such as restricting the circumstances in which precarious contracts can be used and limiting the length of time workers can be employed on such a contract but also how employers can use precarious contracts piled up on each other instead of granting its employees full time contracts;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Mary HONEYBALL, Anna HEDH, Julie WARD, Soraya POST, Sophia IN 'T VELD, Malin BJÖRK, Terry REINTKE, Ernest URTASUN

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 a (new)

7a. Calls on the Commission to conduct a study how procedures related to the official recognition of the gender reassignment of a person, or the absence of such procedures, affect transgender people's position on the labour market, particularly their access to employment, level of remuneration, career development and pensions;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8

8. Invites the Commission to carry out an impact assessment on minimum income schemes in the EU and to consider further steps that would take into account the economic and social circumstances of each Member State as well as an assessment of whether the schemes enable households to meet basic personal needs; invites the Commission to evaluate on this basis the manner of, and the means for providing where applicable an adequate minimum income above the poverty threshold of 60 % of national median income in all Member States in line with national practices and traditions while respecting their individual characteristics in order to support social convergence across the EU without causing a negative effect on collective agreements in specific member states;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10

10. Stresses that the effects of poverty and social exclusion on children can last a lifetime and result in intergenerational transmission of poverty; stresses that in all Member States the risk of poverty and social exclusion among children is strongly linked to their parents’ level of education, and in particular to that of their mothers, and their parents’ situation in the labour market and their social conditions; stresses the need to establish a framework of support for teenage mothers, for whom leaving school early is a first step towards poverty; stresses the need to establish a comprehensive set of measures for tackling child poverty and promoting child well-being based on three pillars, namely access to adequate resources and reconciling work and family life; access to good quality services; and children's participation in decisions that affects them, and in cultural, leisure and sport activities;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10

10. Stresses that in all Member States the risk of poverty and social exclusion among children is strongly linked to their parents’ level of education, and in particular to that of their mothers, and their parents’ situation in the labour market and their social conditions; stresses the need to establish a framework of support for teenage mothers, for whom leaving school early is a first step towards poverty; reiterates the need of access to information to be made easily accessible on equal basis especially in the field of social securities, adult education, healthcare and economic support being available;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Mary HONEYBALL, Anna HEDH, Julie WARD, Soraya POST, Sophia IN 'T VELD, Malin BJÖRK, Terry REINTKE, Ernest URTASUN

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 a (new)

10a. Believes that equal treatment legislation is a vital instrument to combat poverty resulting from marginalisation and discrimination of sexual and gender minorities; calls in this regard on the Council to adopt the 2008 proposal for a directive on implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation; calls furthermore, for the explicit inclusion in any future recast of the Gender Equality Directives of a ban on discrimination on grounds of gender identity;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Mary HONEYBALL, Anna HEDH, Julie WARD, Soraya POST, Sophia IN 'T VELD, Malin BJÖRK, Terry REINTKE, Ernest URTASUN

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 b (new)

10b. Believes that improvement in rights awareness should be part of the efforts to combat gender-based poverty and exclusion; remains concerned that rights awareness in the area of discrimination on the basis of gender, gender identity and sexual orientation, and awareness of the existence of bodies and organisations offering support to victims of discrimination, is low; calls, in this regard, on the Commission to closely monitor the effectiveness of national complaint bodies and procedures in the context of the implementation of the gender equality directives with regard to gender identity, gender expression and gender reassignment and the implementation of the employment equality directive with regard to sexual orientation;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11

11. Notes that the absence of a partner income is a major contributing factor to the poverty trap and to the social exclusion of women; notes the often precarious situation of divorced women who are heads of household, for whom an adequate level of maintenance should be defined; underlines the fact that divorced women are prone to discrimination and poverty is evidence of women not yet being fully economically independent which stipulates the need of further actions in the field of labour market and the closing of the gender pay gap;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12

12. Notes that women’s economic independence plays a crucial role in their ability to escape situations of violence as a proactive measure being taken; calls for the provision of social protection systems guaranteeing the social rights of women who are victims of violence; underlines the need of an increase in availability of information when it comes to legal services for victims of violence and further legislative measures to define gender based violence as a concrete criminal act closely related to hate crimes;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM

Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 a (new)

12a. Believes there is a need of working proactive to overcome violence against women by targeting norms which glorifies violence; underlines that stereotypes and structures which are the foundation for men's violence against women to be combated by proactive measures through campaigns and further education on macho cultures on national level;

2016/02/25
Committee: FEMM