36 Amendments of Donata GOTTARDI related to 2008/2118(INI)
Amendment 8 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A a (new)
Recital A a (new)
Aa. whereas the quantitative and qualitative objectives of the Lisbon Strategy and the new Integrated Guidelines for Growth and Jobs – especially where female and adult employment is concerned – are dictated by the realisation that, from the point of view of sustainability, it is intolerable to let the resources in question and their potential go to waste and that the stability of pension and welfare systems is in jeopardy,
Amendment 11 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A b (new)
Recital A b (new)
Ab. whereas the figures quoted in the Commission communication show that countries and regions with a high female employment rate that have social protection systems also have a higher birth rate,
Amendment 13 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A c (new)
Recital A c (new)
Ac. whereas caring, for centuries the preserve of women, is all too frequently still not considered ‘proper’ work; whereas its status remains unclear, and a universally recognised definition has yet to be produced,
Amendment 15 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A d (new)
Recital A d (new)
Ad. whereas the three main challenges facing the EU – demographic changes, globalisation, and climate change – demand inter-generational solidarity based on a wide-ranging pact not just between generations, but between the sexes and peoples, who must look to the future with renewed confidence,
Amendment 16 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A e (new)
Recital A e (new)
Ae. whereas such a pact is intrinsically of a collective nature, applies on a large scale, and is based on individual freedom of choice, especially for women, who must be entitled to have as many children as they want while pursuing such activities as they might wish to engage in at different stages in their lives, and also allowed to change their minds without being subjected to discrimination, since all these things form part and parcel of the rights attaching to citizenship,
Amendment 17 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A f (new)
Recital A f (new)
Af. whereas the pact between the sexes, generations, and peoples must be built on the possibility for individuals to organise their working and private lives and reconcile the economic imperatives of production entailed in gainful employment with the possibility of choosing what tasks to devote themselves to and when, within a context of rights and responsibilities laid down by legislation and agreement,
Amendment 18 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A g (new)
Recital A g (new)
Ag. whereas inter-generational responsibility requires public authorities to adopt a proactive approach, and all social stakeholders to play a leading role, in order to guarantee high standards in services of general interest and provide for the necessary welfare and social security systems on a sufficient scale,
Amendment 19 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A h (new)
Recital A h (new)
Ah. whereas the presence of women on the labour market is linked to cultural changes and reforms designed to give effect to policies making for a work-life balance and a redistribution of roles; whereas such policies cover a variety of fundamentally interconnected areas ranging from temporarily shorter working hours, to be achieved by converting employment contracts into part-time working contracts, and leave arrangements (maternity, paternity, parental, and family leave) to the network of personal care services,
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A i (new)
Recital A i (new)
Ai. whereas personal care services – aimed at children, older people, those who cannot look after themselves, and the sick – can be either collective (public, private, or a mixture of the two) or individual (home helps, babysitters, caregivers, etc),
Amendment 21 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A j (new)
Recital A j (new)
Aj. whereas demographic changes are having a significant impact on people’s personal and working lives; whereas inadequate services, low wage levels, delay in entering the labour market, lengthy successions of fixed-term contracts, and insufficient incentives for young couples are among the reasons why young people choose not to start a family and have children until later; whereas rigid working patterns and the difficulty of returning to the labour market after spending time as a carer make it difficult to enter freely into decisions, whether they are intended to achieve a work-life balance or involve alternation of work and family life,
Amendment 28 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
Ca. whereas attention should begin to focus on the concept of care-related discrimination, linked to the fact of taking up maternity, paternity, parental, and family leave, the object being to determine whether discrimination in such instances constitutes forms of discrimination based on gender; whereas it is necessary to agree upon a Europe-wide definition of the concept of multiple discrimination,
Amendment 31 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas there is a ‘sandwich generation’ of 40 to 60 year oldsmiddle-aged women in the European population who often combine the role of parents with that of childrenmothers acting as daughters and hence responsible for elderly and dependent family whilst being actively involved imembers with that of wage- and salary-earners on the labour market,
Amendment 36 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas the work of Gary Becker, the winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics,economists and demographers uses economic and mathematical models to highlight the economic value of household production – carried out mainly by women, – particularly in terms of housework, educating children, looking after dependants regardless of their age or state of dependency, or running inter- generational solidarity networks,
Amendment 37 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F a (new)
Recital F a (new)
Fa. whereas long-running research by economists and demographers suggests that women’s contribution to GDP would be even higher if their unpaid work were factored in,
Amendment 66 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital M
Recital M
M. whereas the educational role played by women/mothers or men/fathers towards future generations and elderly and dependent personrole of women and men as caregivers is essential for the advancement of the common good and should be recognised as such by cross- cutting policies, including policies for women and men who make a free choice to devote all or part of their time to this activity,
Amendment 67 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital O
Recital O
O. whereas these early retirement policies implemented in many Member States have produced a new category of persons, ‘young retirees’, who, despite their position on the margin of the formal labour market, very often have the wisdom, skills and knowledge required for the advancement of society, and theseir involvement should therefore be maximised for the benefit of the common goosecured through specific policies aimed at this target group,
Amendment 69 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital O a (new)
Recital O a (new)
Oa. whereas motherhood and the fact that working people take up their leave entitlements are, regrettably, still a recurring and widespread source of unacceptable discrimination,
Amendment 72 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital O b (new)
Recital O b (new)
Ob. whereas since October 2003 the Commission has been holding consultations with the two sides of industry on the subject of the work-life balance; whereas those consultations, which have entered a second phase, are predicated on the importance of finding policies and means enabling ‘good jobs’ to be married with women’s and men’s responsibilities as caregivers,
Amendment 73 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital O c (new)
Recital O c (new)
Oc. whereas the policies and means is seeking to promote a work-life balance – from part-time working to leave and services – are almost invariably perceived to be aimed exclusively at women, rather than as ways of encouraging fair sharing of responsibilities,
Amendment 76 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital O d (new)
Recital O d (new)
Od. whereas the Commission has produced proposals aimed at improving maternity leave and protecting self- employed mothers,
Amendment 82 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital Q
Recital Q
Q. whereas the principles of flexicurity as applicable to women were set out in Parliament's resolution of November 2007, and whereas working time arrangements in most parts of Europe do not seem to provide much support for people with children and employees with children seem to be less likely to work in jobs with flexible working arrangements than those without,
Amendment 86 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital T
Recital T
T. whereas there is a risk of being ‘'forced’' to work part -time, particularly for women/mothers, this choice often being imposed upon them due to the lack of viable childcare structures, and there is also a risk that the switch from full time to part time might not be allowed, making it difficult, not to say impossible, to achieve a work-life balance,
Amendment 89 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Calls on the national statistical institutes in the Member States to develop measurassess tohe possibility of includeing in their SNA the value, broken down by gender, of invisible work in the field of inter-generational solidarity and its contribution to national GDP;
Amendment 90 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1. Welcomes the Commission communication and its conclusions aimed at improving the quality of life for all in a context more conducive to the free realisation of family plans, laying emphasis on equality between men and women within the broader Lisbon goals;
Amendment 91 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 b (new)
Paragraph 1 b (new)
Amendment 92 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 c (new)
Paragraph 1 c (new)
1c. Points to the need to find appropriate medium- and long-term solutions to avert the risk that young people and women will be denied a proper pension and hence exposed to a greater risk of poverty;
Amendment 93 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 d (new)
Paragraph 1 d (new)
1d. Notes that the number of households in the various EU countries is gradually rising, but their size is being reduced (one-parent families), that more and more children are living in blended families, and that the adoption of non-European children is increasing and immigration is bringing a variety of new family cultures;
Amendment 94 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 e (new)
Paragraph 1 e (new)
1e. Calls for careful analysis to be brought to bear on the studies which suggest that the employment contract should be replaced by an activity contract so as to allow for mobility, alternation, life cycles, and career breaks, as regards both employment and work in a self-employed capacity, accounted for by training or caring;
Amendment 95 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 f (new)
Paragraph 1 f (new)
1f. Calls for research facilities and institutes to invest more resources to better effect in the ecological improvement of products aimed at children or those who cannot look after themselves, or intended for household use in general;
Amendment 96 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 g (new)
Paragraph 1 g (new)
1g. Calls for ways to be found to prevent female employment on the labour market being adversely affected by measures to support, enhance the status of, and put a price on, caring, paying particular attention to the situation in countries where informal work, the underground economy, and undeclared employment already exist on a large scale; calls, therefore, for assessment in order to determine how society and female employment might be affected by measures serving to confer recognition on caring, not least by means of symbolic calculation for pension purposes;
Amendment 98 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Calls onUrges Eurostat to assess the possibility of developing measures to highlight the value of invisible work in the field of inter- generational solidarity and its contribution to the Union’s GDP and, for this purpose, to work closely with the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Labour Office (ILO);
Amendment 99 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Calls on the Commission to present specific initiatives to validate the skills acquired in carrying out educational tasks, caring for dependent persons and household management so that these skills are taken into consideration upon re-entry into the labour market; points out that soft skill assessment is central to skill assessment according to the best traditions of national experimentation with systems to make demand for labour intersect with the labour supply;
Amendment 115 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Calls on the public authorities to take the necessary steps to enable women/rking mothers and men/fathers to make better chobe assisted under policies as to how they wish to reconcile work and family lifeimed at promoting a work-life balance and to have access to the means serving to achieve that end;
Amendment 124 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9a. Believes that steps need to be taken to improve the treatment not just of maternity leave, but also of paternity and parental leave, with particular reference to the leave taken by working fathers, bearing in mind that in all of the Member States only a small percentage of men make use of their leave entitlements;
Amendment 128 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10 a (new)
Paragraph 10 a (new)
10a. Welcomes the proposal to include an article on the work-life balance in the directive on the organisation of working time and points to the need to allow for such a provision when laying down the working week and on-call time arrangements;
Amendment 132 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11a. Believes that inter-generational solidarity should be promoted by means of judicious fiscal policies (in the form of transfers, deductions, and rebates), measures to promote active ageing, skills development policies, and integrated service networks for children, older people, people with disabilities, and those who cannot look after themselves, assessing how they facilitate or adversely affect personal choices and the work-life balance;