European Parliament
A7-0160/2012
Antonyia Parvanova  (ALDE ).
– Madam President, Commissioner, dear colleagues, I very much welcome the report on equal pay for male and female workers and would like to congratulate Mrs Bauer for the great work accomplished. Despite having extensive equal pay legislation for over fifty years, the gender pay gap has only marginally reduced, and this provides a clear indication that legislation needs to be improved with a view to eradicating the still existing stereotypes about the role of women in the labour market. These stereotypes contribute to occupational segregation, the undervaluing of women’s work and the rising phenomenon of poverty among women.
Also, in order to achieve tangible results, it is of the utmost important to support concrete policy initiatives which improve wage transparency, impose stricter sanctions on employers for non-compliance with equal pay legislation, and empower those suffering from wage discrimination to take their cases to court and seek a remedy.
It is high time we took action to achieve concrete results in practice, and not only on paper, by addressing one of the most persistent and rigid problems in the field of gender equality.

