International Women’s Day

For an equal future!

On this International Women’s Day under the theme “Invest in women: Accelerate progress”, the UN stresses that “The world is facing many crises, ranging from geopolitical conflicts to soaring poverty levels and escalating impacts of climate changes. These challenges can only be addressed by solutions that empower women. By investing in women, we can spark change and speed the transition towards a healthier, safer and more equal world for all”

According UN there are five key areas needing joint action :

• Investing in women, a human rights issue
• Ending poverty
• Implementing gender-responsive financing
• Shifting to a green econonmy and care society
• Supporting feminist change-makers (UN Women).

R&D works on a daily basis for the rights, equality and recognition of our female colleagues, but also of all our male colleagues in the European institutions

Unfortunately, women remain the first victims of any malfunction and unequal treatment, at work or in private life. Often facing precarious situations, discrimination, mental overload, physical and/or psychological mistreatment in their homes and/or at work, women carry a heavy burden and still try to remain, despite all adversity, standing.

R&D has always been and will remain alongside our female colleagues in listen to them, supporting them and taking action so that they can benefit from a better work-life quality.

Equal treatment between women and men should not be limited to the distribution of management posts!

In this regard, we welcomed the President’s commitment to achieve the target set by the end of her term of office regarding the distribution of management posts equitably between women and men. Even if it should be repeated for the umpteenth time, taking into account the rights and expectations of our sisters is certainly not limited to these aspects alone.

However, the equal treatment policy must also be adapted to the specific problems of our AST, AST/SC and contract agents colleagues most of whom occupy support posts without any real opportunity of mobility and/or career development, and will therefore never be able to access management posts.

To this end, R&D has been the driving force behind our institution organising the internal competitions to enable our AST/SC and AC colleagues to progress in their careers. In addition, R&D regularly offers training courses tailored to help our colleagues prepare properly for these competitions.

If we have to talk about equality, let’s stop the dramatic inequalities within our institution:

R&D calls for the following points to be included in the new HR strategy:

• A policy of genuine equal opportunities
• A profound reform of the appointment procedures to improve transparency, to put an end to the abusive practice of parachuting and, more broadly, to the increasing politicization of such appointments
• Real career prospects for our AD (in non-management posts), AST, AST/SC and CA colleagues

Cristiano Sebastiani,

President