GENDER AND INFORMATION SOCIETY Informal Ministerial Conference	Αthens, Greece, 6.5.2003
Address by Anna KARAMANOU, Chairperson of the European Parliament Committee on Women΄s Rights and Equal Opportunities

Οn behalf of the European Parliament Committee on Women´s Rights and Equal Opportunities, which I have the honour to chair, I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to the Greek Presidency and to Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou for their initiative to raise the issue on Gender and the Information Society as the subject for the discussion in this informal Ministerial Conference. We are all witnessing the dramatic changes in our society due to the rapid spread of information and communication technology. These changes will be even more pronounced in the future, and they will affect the way of working and living of all citizens - both women and men.

We must be well prepared for these deep changes. We all must learn and adapt to the demands of this changing world, as it is crucial for the well-being and success of all citizens of Europe, women as well as men.

However, I see a great risk that women are marginalized and will not be able to profit from this important development. I am deeply concerned that women in the future of Europe will be left aside. Women´s role in the future of Europe has since long time preoccupied us in the European Parliament Committee on Women´s Rights and Equal Opportunities. Our efforts to influence the process of building the future of Europe have been very intense during the past twelve months, as we feared that women´s voices would not be sufficiently heard in the work of the Convention.

With the aim to influence the process within the Convention, the Committee on Women´s Rights and Equal Opportunities has submitted several contributions to the Convention. These submissions were the outcome of several meetings we initiated and to which we invited Women Members of the Convention, representatives of NGOs and the civil society, experts and representatives of the Commission, who all demonstrated great support to our work.

Women´s role in the Convention has been considered in meetings with the Network of Parliamentarians responsible for gender issues in Member States and Accession States and the European Parliament. Such a meeting took place on my initiative on 31 March in Athens, when we adopted a second declaration on the Convention, where we reiterated our requests put forward in our first declaration which had been adopted during the Network meeting in Copenhagen on 23-24 November 2002.

Let me just mention some of the requests:

ü equality between women and men should be included among the values of the Union,

ü gender mainstreaming should be a fundamental principle of the Constitutional Treaty and implemented in all policies and actions of the Union,

ü violence against women should be an objective of the Union and have a legal basis in the Treaty,

ü the Constitution should be drafted in a gender neutral language, and

ü the "acquis communautaire" should be fully maintained and strengthened.

The Information Society is a completely different society from what we were used to in the past. Today, persistant gender gaps in the society as a whole, for example in decision-making, employment, education and research, are reflected in the ICT-related sectors. Women are far from sufficiently associated to the rapid development, be it the ICT-related education, research, jobs, use of tools, start up of ICT business, leadership, enterpreneurship, telework or computer and internet use. Strong differences in gender status and attitudes does not make the picture more bright. A serious negative consequence of the rapid ICT development is the growing sexualization and use of pornography in media which often presents women and girls as inferiour beings, exploited as sexual objects and commodities.

Tackling those gender gaps is a necessary condition for meeting the EU objectives of full employment, sustainable economic growth and social cohesion. It is the responsibility of you as representatives of Governments and of the EU Institutions to undertake this important task, by preparing concrete actions in order for women and girls to catch up with men and fully benefit from the expanding Information Society.

Actions must also be taken on an international level. I welcome that the UN Commission on the Status of Women urges Governments to take actions in order to increase participation and access of women to the media, and information and communications technologies, as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women.

I can only echo this request, and I hope that the European delegation to the forthcoming World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in December, and in Tunis in 2005, will put forward strong arguments in favour of women´s integration into every facet of the Summits, and that the UN recommendations are taken into account in the preparatory work.

Also the European Parliament should give its contribution. A better gender balance in the Information Society is one of the priority concerns of our Committee, and the subject of a new initiative report, for which I am the Rapporteur. I will elaborate concrete proposals for requests that the Committee and the Parliament can put forward in order that women and girls can partake on an equal footing with men in the future Information Society, and that the benefits of new information and communications technologies are available also to women.

Anna Karamanou

akaramanou@europarl.eu.int website: www.karamanou.gr