The questionnaire prepared by the EWL Secretariat was first sent out to all members of the European Parliament in February 1999. It was meant to measure the commitment of MEPs towards equal opportunities, their opinions, past activities and planned measures.

As we did not receive many answers, we sent a first reminder in April to the heads of political groups. Another reminder was then sent in mid-May. It has to be noted that some people did no seem to understand the purpose of the questionnaire i.e. their personal views on equal opportunities. Some MEPs referred us to their " specialist in women’s affairs " without answering themselves; others only sent a party brochure on women in the EU.

While we understand that MEPs are very busy, we regret this lack of interest and would have thought that, during an electoral campaign, more people would have participated.  

We wish however to thank all members of Parliament who took the time to answer the questionnaire. 

Despite the low response, some interesting conclusions could be drawn. See below.

This very low response level indicates – even at a time when MEPs should be more responsive to civil dialogue -, that gender equality does not command a high priority. It could be concluded that women’s issues and dialogue with women’s organisations, which are the only ones representing women’s interests at European level are a negligible concern, despite statements to the contrary.

We however note that female MEPs, although only 27% of members of the European Parliament make up 70% of the respondents.

Table 3. Importance of different policy fields for the promotion of equal opportunities, rated in points from 1 (less important) to 5 (very important).

The very slight differences in rating these different policy fields show that MEPs consider that all fields are closely linked and cannot be considered separately for the promotion of equal opportunities between women and men.

 It is noteworthy that male MEPs give less importance to increasing both the labour market participation of women and the number of women in decision making position, which are fields still dominated by men. Is this linked to the fear of competition with women? (While it has to be noticed that men who did answer are not the least concerned about equal opportunities!). 

On the other hand, male MEPs tend to rate very high both the fight against violence against women and the provision of care services. Both these issues are "traditional women’s issues" and are linked to an image of women as victims and mothers. While these issues are indeed very important to women, this conclusion is not very encouraging. 

The increased of participation of women on the labour market and the individualisation of rights in taxation and social security systems are issues, which aim very concretely at promoting equal opportunities, as they would greatly improve the day to day situation of many women in the EU. It is therefore very surprising and disappointing that these issues are rated so low by both female and male MEPs. This might show that members of the European Parliament might be cut from the reality of daily life of citizens in the member states.

Table 5. Means chosen by MEPs to promote equal opportunities (in % of answers given) - Some MEPs gave several answers for each field