It is nine months since the EFAy launched its Women’s Day petition with the aim of presenting it in 2008 to the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament.

Unfortunately, the number of people who have signed the petition to date falls far short of the target figure of one thousand signatures. People are nevertheless supportive of this issue, as could be seen recently when the EFAy Women’s Day petition was launched as a group on the Facebook website (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6285384411) and within a week over a hundred people had joined the group. However, despite several calls for the Facebook group members to sign the EFAy petition, only a handful of people have.

Below are some facts relating to employment discrepancies between men and women that will hopefully motivate you to sign the petition, or if you have already done so, to persuade all your friends to do so.

• Women earn 15% less than men in the EU and have continued to do so for the past decade, despite of the eight million jobs created in the EU since 2000, six million have been taken by women.

• 59% of university graduates in the EU are female, but take up fewer graduate positions than men

• 77% of EU society believe that there should be more female managers, but male managers vastly outnumber female managers

• 40% of people in the EU believe that if you are a woman you are more likely to be discriminated against (43% of women believe this compared to 36% of men)

• 72% of people in the EU believe that we need more female Members of Parliament

• 68% of people in the EU agree that family responsibilities are an obsticle to accessing managerial positions

• 22% of people in the EU believe that a job applicats gender would put them at a disadvantage when a company can choose betwen two people with equal skills and qualifications.

• 47% of people believe that female applicants are less likely to get a job, be promoted or receive training than male applicants, if all variables are constant

• 79% of people in the EU are in favour of measures being adopted to promote equal opprtunities among men and women

This is just a limited sample of figures taken from sources in the European Commission and represents an EU average. Obviously disparities of pay and treatment between men and women in the work place are far greater in some European states than others, but the figures still beg an answer to the question of why discrimination between men and women in the work place exisit at all.

Some possible answers to this question are:

• that current laws are not applied effectively
• measures against discrimination are not fully integrated into state/national employment policies and the European social fund is not fully taken advantage of
• the promotion of equal pay is not fully part of the social responsibility of employers
• the exchange of good practice across the EU is not supported or promoted adequately enough

The EFAy petition is an attempt to get the EU to address some of these issues more effectively. If you are in support of equal pay and working opportunities between women and men, this is your chance to act in a purposful way to lobby those in power to achieve our goal.

The EFAy look forward to presenting the Women’s Day petion to the European Parliament Petitions Committee this March 8th, but we can only do it with your help. Sign the petition now and/or forward the following link to everyone in your address book.

http://www.petitiononline.com/kernow/petition.html

Together we will make a difference!