Correspondents' Correspondence Sex Discrimination-II
LAND, THOMAS
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Sex Discrimination??II Brussels??Last year the...
...Nevertheless, until recently the article has been largely ignored...
...Says one spokesman for the Commission: "Laws alone are not enough to improve the status of working women . . . . Legislation can only provide the background against which the people's fundamental attitudes to women within and outside the home must be changed...
...The Commission, actually the EEC's executive body, rests its case on Article 119 of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the nine-member Community's charter document...
...A follow-up directive, issued the next year, guarantees women the right to equitable working conditions, and equal access to jobs, vocational training and promotions...
...Holland because it excluded women in the public sector from protection under its equal pay laws...
...Sex Discrimination??II Brussels??Last year the European Commission initiated legal proceedings against seven European Economic Community (EEC) members for sex discrimination in employment (see, "Correspondents' Correspondence," NL, June 18,1979...
...As the body responsible for supervising the application of EEC laws, the Commission has prepared "reasoned opinions" to guide the reluctant governments in forming new policies...
...The national Equal Pay Act, it notes, enables women to sue for parity in remuneration only when they are employed by a firm having a formal job-evaluation scheme...
...Those figures tend to confirm the view that there is more to achieving sexual equality than simply mandating it...
...France was sued for a discriminatory law involving housing allocations...
...All sides seem eager to avoid the consequent lengthy and embarrassing litigation, though, strengthening hopes that the matter can be settled through a diplomatic compromise that would allow the two holdouts to fall into step without losing face...
...In Britain, for instance, the average hourly gross pay for blue-collar workers showed a 41 per cent difference between men and women in 1972, but only a 29 per cent gap in 1977...
...In Britain, the Commission contends, the concept of equal pay for equal work is given too restricted an interpretation...
...Should this not have the desired effect, it will call for the first hearing on the violations before the European Court...
...When it became apparent last year that its efforts had not changed the situation, the Commission began infringement proceedings against the offending member countries...
...The third directive, produced in 1978, calls for women to be given the same social security benefits men enjoy, by 1984...
...Those five subsequently initiated the steps that are necessary to bring their laws into conformity with the Community's...
...Belgium and Luxembourg because some of their pay allowances were restricted to employees defined as "heads of households," which traditionally does not include women...
...The remaining two, Britain and Denmark, could wind up before the European Court of Justice, and their recalcitrance is likely to attract the urgent attention of a world conference of women scheduled to be held next month in Copenhagen...
...Thomas Land...
...and Germany because it failed to enact legislation that would guarantee equal pay...
...Since then, five of the countries have agreed to mend their ways...
...Pay inequalities have been similarly reduced in other member countries as well, except for France...
...Despite this unresolved situation, women in all the EEC countries have made considerable, if uneven, advances toward equality in the job market...
...The first, put out in 1975, requires employers to provide equal pay for equal work...
...Ironically, Britain, now ruled by a woman prime minister for the first time in its history, and Denmark, where the social status of women is among the highest in the world, so far have failed to take any action...
...In an attempt to deal with the problem administratively, the Commission formulated three directives aimed at having EEC members treat working women fairly...
...Interestingly, this outlaws sex discrimination in industry for economic, not altruistic, reasons: to uphold that basic element of capitalism, free competition in the job market...
...The complaint against Denmark is that its equal-pay statute only applies when men and women are employed at identical jobs, but not when they do different work of equal value...
Vol. 63 • June 1980 • No. 11
