Much of the current Equality and workers’ rights legislation we now take for granted has come from Europe. Equal pay for women workers was included as one of the provisions of the first EU Treaty in 1957 – 13 years before the UK adopted its own legislation on equal pay!

An end to unequal pay

• Equal pay: We’ve had equal pay legislation for nearly 40 years. But too many companies carried on classifying men’s and women’s jobs differently, paying higher wages to men for doing similar skilled jobs to women. That is why Labour MEPs backed laws guaranteeing “equal pay for work of equal value”. Many women since have won equal pay claims, some backdated years including school dinner ladies, hospital and factory workers.
• Equal rights for part-time workers: More than half of British women workers work part-time. In the past, many women lost out. Labour MEPs backed a law to give equal rights to part-time workers which took effect in July 2000. 6m British citizens, mainly women, have benefited with equal rights to pro-rata paid leave, pensions, maternity rights, access to training and other company perks and benefits.

Better rights for women as parents

• Maternity rights: Gone are the days when women had to work for the same employer for 2 years before getting maternity rights. EU laws now mean that around 70,000 women a year in Britain are entitled to maternity rights from day one provided they have been working for over a year.
• Parental leave: Since 2002, a new EU law means that any parent with children under 5 has the right to a minimum of 13 weeks parental leave to be taken whenever they choose over the 5 year period. That extends to 18 weeks for any parent of a disabled child under 18. 
• Right to return to work: Many older women will remember the days when getting pregnant meant losing your job. EU laws have put paid to that. Discrimination against pregnant women is outlawed and a woman’s job must be held open so she can return to a post without loss of pay or status.

Paid holidays and a shorter working week

• Paid holidays: Thanks to the EU, millions of women workers have been given the automatic right to 4 weeks paid annual holiday. Labour MEPs strongly backed this new EU law which also guarantees all workers at least one day off per week – good news for the many women workers, including part-time workers in sectors such as cleaning, who often only got one day off every fortnight.
• Shorter hours: British workers work the longest hours in Europe. One in eight mothers work more than 40 hours a week, 30% of fathers more than 48 hours, taking its toll on family life. But now a new EU law is here to help. Employees can no longer be obliged to work more than 48 hours per week, are guaranteed breaks and night shifts are restricted to 8 hours.

Pensions

• Equal rights to a pension: Pensioner poverty is a real problem for women, many of whom were excluded from company pension schemes because they worked part-time or had career breaks to have children. EU laws prevent pension discrimination and guarantee equal rights for all to social security benefits.

Discrimination in goods and services

• The Gender Directive prohibits sex discrimination in goods and services.  In the UK this was already prohibited by existing sex discrimination legislation, but the Directive strengthened anti-discrimination measures in the fields of insurance and other financial services and made explicit that less favourable treatment, for reasons of pregnancy and maternity in the provision of goods and services, is sex discrimination.
The Directive came into force at the end of 2007.

Women in the developing world

• Labour MEPs have championed the rights of women and girls in the developing world. The EU is the world’s biggest donor of aid to the poorer countries.  The UN Millennium Development Goals include commitments to foster greater equality for women, to extend the education of girls and to act to improve maternal health in the developing world.  The EU is urging member states to deliver on their promise to increase their level of international aid.

Combating violence against women: The Daphne III programme
 
• For ten years the Daphne programmes have funded action to combat all types of violence against children, young people and women in Europe including violence in the family, violence in schools and other establishments, violence at work, commercial sexual exploitation, genital mutilation, trafficking and so on.
 
The Daphne III programme starts a new period of activity 2007-2013 with a budget of € 116 million.

The future

In 2006 new plans were announced to take the issue of equality forward and to address, among other things, equal economic independence for women and men, eradicating gender-based violence and trafficking and eliminating gender stereotypes in society.

A new European Institute for Gender Equality has been set up, based in Vilnius, Lithuania, to review all existing EU gender equality law and increasing awareness of gender inequality.

In the future all EU policy making will include an assessment of how it will affect the lives of both women and men and how it will promote equality.