Even More Unemployment - 4
Women and EMU
Inge V Johansen
A New European women's network, Women Towards a Different Europe , has been established. Its first task is to take an active stand against Economic and Monetary Union. Below, Inge V Johansen explains why EMU is an issue of particular importance to women. Reprinted from Spectre No.3.
For the first time an all-European women's network has been created to fight Economic and Monetary Union and its economic and social consequences for women. Women Towards a Different Europe was formed, at a seminar in Copenhagen last November, by women from fifteen European countries.
On 8 March, International Women's Day, it began its first campaign, to collect signatures for a women's petition against EMU.
The first initiative was taken by Catalan women who had had enough of the social deterioration caused by the Spanish government's adaptation to the EMU convergence criteria. They invited women from Scandinavia to a meeting in Barcelona, because, as they put it, Scandinavian women had experience of actively, and with some success, combating the Maastricht Treaty.
Women lose out
Although the effects of EMU policies are felt in particular in southern Europe where the welfare state is weak, there is no doubt that women in all member states are affected by both these and other EU policies in varying degrees. The effort to reduce budget deficits by cuts in public expenditure has meant social cuts, a rise in unemployment, increasing privatisation and social polarisation. The Industrial Council of the Danish labour movement has found that so far around a million people have lost their jobs as a result of the EMU convergence criteria. Women are inevitably among those who are hit the worst, as more women than men are employed in the public sector, whilst a disproportionate number are dependent on welfare state provisions.
A paid job, an independent income, and equal rights and opportunities are important tools of women's liberation; but what we have experienced as a result of EU economic and labour market policies is an undermining of many of the gains made by women during the 1960s and '70s in northern Europe and, somewhat later, in the south. The official EU policy of sexual equality does little to remedy this situation. Fine words guarantee nothing. At present a Fourth Action Programme for Women and Men is in operation, but it looks more like a recipe for EU integration than a real programme of action for equal opportunities.
Cuts in the welfare state
It is, of course, far too early to make a final evaluation of the impact of EMU policies on women's lives. However, there can be no doubt about the tendency of these policies to reduce the welfare state: the only question is by how much.
Cutbacks in the public sector mean not only a loss of jobs, but a restriction in the expansion of employment for women in an area of the economy which has provided a more secure employment environment for women than has the private sector. A high rate of private sector employment for women in the United States, for example, involves a large number of poorly paid, part-time unprotected jobs.
The European Network of Experts on the Situation of Women in the Labour Market in its report of October 1996 found a "widening gap between state policies and current family patterns and modes of behaviour," and that many trends seemed to be "reinforcing this mismatch': on the one hand female employment within the EU has been On the rise (though much of this is in precarious and poorly-paid jobs), showing that more women aspire to a paid job and independent income. Furthermore, large groups of people no longer live in traditional families. On the other hand, the tendency of the EU is "to cut back on the policies which have relieved women of some of the burden of care and provided access to employment." These conclusions are a clear indictment of EU policies, which are seen as at best inadequate and at worst harmful to women's equal opportunities and the welfare of families.
Current EU policies actively promote flexibility in working hours (i.e. more part-time work) and deregulation, which means more precarious jobs for women. Such policies tend to increase the marginalisation of women, possibly with the intention of putting pressure on them to withdraw from the labour market. In Italy a new Family Ministry has been set up to support women's return to the role of housewife. These policies will also reduce women's social protection at a time when unemployment benefits and pensions are increasingly made to depend on lifelong full-time employment.
Scandinavian women
Scandinavian governments have attempted to toe the line with regard to adjusting to the EMU criteria. Despite, for example, the Danish opt-out, it seems that the only real "benefit" of this will be to deprive the government of any real influence on the EMU policies that it continues to apply.
There is a myth that Scandinavian women have achieved sexual equality. On the contrary, there has been a general deterioration of equal opportunities for Danish women since the late '70s. Danish government economist Nina Smith explains this development as being a result of a slowdown in the increase in public sector wages in relation to the private sector. There remain, also, huge differences in the wages earned by women and men within the public sector, a gap which cannot be explained by a lack of qualifications. Her conclusion is that there is no prospect at the moment of greater equality, that in fact things are moving rapidly in the wrong direction.
Danish unemployment statistics show that cutbacks in the public sector are disproportionately affecting women. This policy began in the last decade under a Conservative coalition government. 71.3% of Danish women participate in the labour market, but women's unemployment rose from 9.6% in 1987 to 13.6% in 1994, when the respective figures for men were 6.4% and 11%. In the so-called economic upturn said to be taking place in Denmark, male unemployment is reported. in the year up to November 1997, to have fallen by 15.7% as opposed to only 7.8% for women. For a number of reasons the situation of Swedish women has deteriorated even more rapidly. An important factor has been that as a new EU member state Sweden has had to adjust very quickly. Formerly the policy of full employment placed women in the most advantageous position of women internationally, but during the years 1990-95, 300,000 jobs disappeared from the public sector, the majority of them women.
Women in southern and eastern Europe
However, Scandinavian women still benefit from relatively strong welfare states, as well as from the gains of the '60s and '70s. In the new and weak welfare states of southern Europe, the situation is disastrous. In Spain and Greece women's position since EU accession has hardly changed, with around three out of every four women still dependent on a man's income.
Adjusting to the EMU criteria has meant that even the limited improvement achieved by women in southern Europe is being eroded. Women are generally employed in precarious jobs: they are the first to lose them. Where ten years ago there was great anticipation with regard to what could be achieved for women by EU membership, recent years have brought disillusion.
In Italy, a founding EEC member state, women gained access to the labour market in greater numbers, but are now severely hit by unemployment. 40% of young women are out of work; in southern Italy the figure for all women is 60%.
In eastern Europe the introduction of a free market economy has had a markedly worse effect on women's lives than on men's, due to the reduction of social security, the closure of many child care facilities formerly funded by the state, and the impoverishment of broad social groups in which women are disproportionately represented. Needless to say, applying for EU membership, which means that weak eastern European economies now have to adjust to the harsh criteria of the single market and EMU, will do nothing to remedy this situation.
Inge V Johansen is a member of the Danish Red-Green Alliance and an activist in Women Towards a Different Europe.
Platform for women towards a different Europe
Europe today is ruled by the law of the market and economic competition, not by human needs. The Economic and Monetary Union strengthens this process, increasing unemployment, poverty and social division, policies which especially affect wonton. Decision-making is being still further removed from democratic control. This is far from the prosperous Europe that has been presented to us.
The network "Women towards a different Europe" believes that there are alternative policies to be pursued and will act on the following platform:
No to the Economic and Monetary Union
Economic independence for women
Secure and Mid work for women
Develop the welfare state - no to social cuts
Shorter working week without loss of pay
Women's right to control their own bodies and sexuality
No to Schengen
Social and democratic rights for Immigrant women
Solidarity between women In Europe...and the rest of the world