The annual inter-parliamentary committee meeting marking International Women’s Day (8 March) brings together MEPs and national MPs to discuss gender equality and women’s rights. This year’s theme is ‘‘An ambitious future for Europe's women after COVID-19: mental load, gender equality in teleworking and unpaid care work after the pandemic’’. After introductory remarks by Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee Chair Robert Biedroń (S&D, PL), EP President Roberta Metsola, French Minister Delegate for Gender Equality, Diversity and Equal Opportunities Élisabeth Moreno, and Vice-President of the European Commission Věra Jourová deliver the opening speeches. The Prime Minister of Iceland, Katrín Jakobsdóttir gives the keynote speech.

Brussels

JOUROVÁ, Věra (EC)

METSOLA, Roberta (EPP, MT, EP President)

Women's rights / Equal opportunities (T2)

International Women's Day (T)

interparliamentary meeting

Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality

BIEDROŃ, Robert (S&D, PL)

Inter-Parliamentary Committee Meeting International Women's Day 2022: welcome speeches and keynote

SOUNDBITE (Polish), Robert BIEDROŃ (S&amp;D, PL), FEMM Chair, It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Interparliamentary Committee Session devoted to the International Women's Day 2022 an ambitious future for Europe's women after the coronavirus, mental health, gender equality and tele-working and unpaid care work after the pandemic. But in light of what is going on in the Ukraine, we are in no position to continue our session. So we have amended our agenda and we will include speakers from the Ukraine. More on that later.

SOUNDBITE (Polish), Robert BIEDROŃ (S&D, PL), FEMM Chair, So dear guests, dear ladies, and gentlemen, a few days ago, in the very heart of Europe, a proper hell broke loose. The Russian Federation and launched a brutal war on Ukraine. This attack is entirely a breach of international agreements as well as human rights and our values, which underpin the very international system. So I want to condemned this aggression which has led to pointless deaths of many.

SOUNDBITE (Polish), Robert BIEDROŃ (S&D, PL), FEMM Chair, Soldiers of the Ukraine armed forces, including 20 percent of female soldiers and many civilians have died as well. I want to express my solidarity with the Ukrainians whose heroism is admired by the whole world. Unfortunately all too often in today's narrative on the current situation, we miss any discussion on the women's right. This discussion is pushed back in spite of many women and leaders in the EU. We don't have many women participants in the discussions on Europe's security.

SOUNDBITE (Polish), Robert BIEDROŃ (S&D, PL), FEMM Chair, Now over million refugees have crossed the borders of Ukraine. Men are not allowed to leave Ukraine now, men in military age. So now women mostly are refugees, many of them pregnant. So we must give those women proper assistance. So from here, I want to declare and promise that our committee will be even more active as regards the situation of women in Ukraine and also Belarus.

SOUNDBITE (Polish), Robert BIEDROŃ (S&D, PL), FEMM Chair, We will talk about Mental health gender equality in tele-working and unpaid care work after the pandemic. Slowly but surely, we are leaving the pandemic crisis behind. The crisis that has greatly impacted our professional and private life. We have moved on to remote work, which has also impacted the situation of many people in these sectors. Before the pandemic, many women worked as cat during the pandemic, the work load put on women increased and greatly.

SOUNDBITE (Polish), Robert BIEDROŃ (S&D, PL), FEMM Chair, We adopted a resolution on the gender aspects of the pandemic. In this resolution, we expressed a view that the remote work cannot replace care for children. Proper children care services must be offered. We hope that the Barcelona objectives will be reached. Member states should fully transpose and implement the directive on a balance between private and work life. Member states should encourage men as well to work in flexible arrangements.

SOUNDBITE (Polish), Robert BIEDROŃ (S&D, PL), FEMM Chair, Ladies and gentlemen, during today's debate, this topic will be raised by our exceptional guests. So without further discussions, I want to give the floor to our President, our great a woman and leader, Roberta Metsola, who will open our meeting now. Dear President, you have the floor now and it is with pride that I welcome you again to our meeting. Thank you.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, Thank you, Robert. Prime Minister, Minister. Friends, I'm proud we are organising this event today. It matters that we have these events that keep this issue high on our agenda. And I'd like to congratulate you, congratulate you, Robert, for becoming chair of this very important committee in our Parliament. It is an honour to have with us Ivana Sadat, chair of the Committee on the European Union within the Verkhovna Rada. And as the chair has said, we cannot speak today without referring to the illegal, vicious Russian invasion of Ukraine. And I wanted to start by commending the incredibly brave women of Ukraine, women who are fighting, women forced to shelter their loved ones in bunkers, women giving birth in disused metro stations, women leading on the front line, women who are testament to courage, strength and resilience.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, Even in the worst of circumstances, during the last two years, we have seen evidence of the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on women. Care work, both paid and unpaid, is at the heart of our society. Our economies depend on care work and across the world, women and girls are performing more than three quarters of the total amount of unpaid care work and two thirds of care workers are women.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, And as covid continued to spread, the demand for such work as increased, forcing incredible additional pressures on women operating in the sector, we also witnessed an escalation of work life conflict as well as barriers for women entering into the labour market. Prime Minister, we discussed this earlier this morning together, the principal reason given by women of working age for being outside the labour force is unpaid care work. And this is particularly alarming.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, Apart from the impact of women in the care industry, the pandemic also has highlighted the disproportion effects of teleworking on women. The opportunity to continue working from home with limited exposure to the virus is testament to the technological process that Europe has made in the last decades. But it came with a cost, a cost that women bore the brunt of, women who are still largely expected to have the primary responsibility of family and household duties, funded difficult, even more than before, to reconcile work and family life.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, Single mothers, particularly had to continuously find ways to balance paid work with non paid work. Women have absorbed absorb more of this care than men with the result that they have either not been able to continue with paid employment or they've had to juggle this paid and unpaid labour with the impact of greater psychological and mental health concerns.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, Domestic violence cases increased across the world. We have received a frightening statistics in this result in disregard access to sexual and reproductive health services became more difficult than ever before, and covid ultimately exposed the real nature and the true extent of the inequalities that women still and must still endure.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, And it is our responsibility. Now, I look to you, Prime Minister, Ministers, I look to you, Vice President, and you, Robert. That is our responsibility. To address it. We have been talking about this first. We were shocked into a new reality, but now we need to start learning and addressing these concerns because nobody will forgive us if we find ourselves as emerging from this pandemic without taking into account the inequalities, the ever growing gaps and the structural challenges that we need to address in our societies.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, Few last points. I am proud that this European Parliament has always been a strong supporter of the promotion of gender mainstreaming in EU spending programmes, including in the Recovery and Resilience Facility. This is the European Union's largest financial instrument supporting recovery in the member states. But again, for this to be truly effective, there must be a joint approach between European Union institutions and national governments, and we must work together in order to achieve this common goal.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, So what we still need is a real paradigm shift in thinking and in culture about the role of women in our societies. We need to move away from women being the de facto caregiver and move towards a Europe of equality of opportunity.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, So I look forward to being with you and listening to your speeches and contributions. Thank you once again for organising this event next week in Strasbourg. The European Parliament session will be dominated by a number of events marking the the celebration, but also the reminders on the eight of March of every year that we are still a very, very, very long way from achieving the goals that even I put myself to, to achieve them to reach when I entered this Parliament in 2013. So let's work together and continue the wonderful work that you and your colleagues to this committee. Thanks a lot.