The EWL is very pleased to report that three of its European Parliament nominees have won MEP Awards 2010, thus winning highly deserved recognition for their work promoting equality between women and men! Our congratulations go to the following winners:
Outstanding achievement:
Eva-Britt SVENSSON (European United Left – Nordic Green Left/ Sweden): Eva-Britt Svensson, since her election as chair of the FEMM committee as shown the strongest support for issues related to women’s rights and has been promoting gender equality both within the European Parliament and outside. Ms. Svensson has given new strength to the Committee and shown constant openness to the work with civil society organisations. Eva-Britt Svensson has in particular been instrumental in putting the issue of male violence against women on the agenda of the European institution, an issue which, despite touching about 45% of women in Europe is still to be seriously tackled by the EU.
Employment & Social Affairs:
Edite ESTRELA (Socialists & Democrats/ Portugal): Edite Estrela is the rapporteur for the draft maternity directive and has ensured the adoption of a strong and progressive text to better protect the rights of mothers and pregnant women and improve the rights of fathers.
Health:
Antonyia PARVANOVA (Liberals & Democrats/ Bulgaria): Ms. Parvanova has proven to be a strong and constant supporter of women’s rights in the area of sexual and reproductive rights, access to health and health care. In the area of sexual and reproductive rights, she has focused on the right and access to in-vitro fertilisation treatments for women and couples. She has also supported the campaign to remove existing anti-abortion legislation in several EU Member States. Ms. Parvanova has shown leadership in promoting respect and protection of the rights of ethnic minority and migrant women. In her Report on Social integration of women belonging to ethnic minority groups, the input and concerns of ethnic women’s organisations were rightly taken on board and addressed. Finally, Ms. Parvanova is very active and supportive in the area of combating and addressing male violence against women, which is an important human rights but also health concern.
Two further EWL nominees were shortlisted:
- Marije CORNELISSEN (Greens – European Free Alliance/ Netherlands): Ms. Cornelissen has been very involved in gender mainstreaming the outputs of the EMPL Committee. Her work has been crucial to ensuring that all the activities of the Committee on employment and social affairs take into consideration the different socio-economic situations of men and women in Europe and aim at gender equality and the protection of women’s rights.
- Diane WALLIS (Liberals & Democrats/ UK): Diane Wallis has been a very strong supporter of the equal representation of women and men within the EU institutions. Diane Wallis was for example the main organiser of the “tie action” in front of the Council whereby a group of women MEPs, including vice presidents of the EP such as Ms. Wallis, went to symbolically offer their CVs to members of the Council wearing a suit and tie, in order to protest against the dominance of male names circulated for the “EU top jobs” at the time.
