Proposition 51K2546

Projet de loi visant au contrôle de l'application des résolutions de la Conférence mondiale sur les femmes réunie à Pékin en septembre 1995 et intégrant la dimension du genre dans l'ensemble des politiques fédérales.

General information ¶

Submitted by

PS | SP MR Open Vld Vooruit Purple Ⅰ

Submission date

June 13, 2006

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

EC Directive gender equality participation of women position of women women's rights

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA MR FN

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Discussion ¶

Nov. 16, 2006 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mrs Lanjri, you are the reporter of this bill.

This seems to surprise you.

Mr. Speaker, I thought this draft was scheduled next week.

It is now on the agenda. This is not about the resolution. It is about the control of the resolution. There are two elements. This document is not about the solemn declaration.

Then it is about the statistics.

I do not currently have the report. I refer to the report.

I also dare to say that it means, in the course of the discussions at the previous meetings of the World Conference on Women, to collect the appropriate gender-related data wherever it is necessary and useful. For this purpose, an interdepartmental working group will be established at the administration.

That is, in a nutshell, the reflection of the report of this bill.

You initially thought it was about the other design that will be discussed next week.

I am currently working on something else, but in that regard I am apparently not a reporter.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, I thank the rapporteur for her brief but concise report.

The bill intends to institutionalize gender mainstreaming in policy through mechanism structures and instruments. The initiative for this was the resolution adopted at the 49th session of the Committee on the Status of Women last year. The resolution encourages states to incorporate gender mainstreaming into their national policies and programmes and to work on gender-split statistics and gender indicators.

A very important policy instrument introduced by the draft is the statistics divided by gender. Measurement is knowing. The VLD has been a party asking for this for years. Last year, our group submitted a resolution on this.

Gender-specific statistics are an indispensable tool to gain a picture of the situation of women and men in society, to assess progress towards the strategic equality objectives and to better assess the impact of the measures already submitted.

However, this is only about the relevant statistics. There is no point in dividing all statistics. That would be a huge, time-consuming and costly work. There was also an amendment in this regard.

It must be said that it is a transversal competence and therefore still an immense job for the competent Minister of Equal Opportunities.

The present draft has been waiting for a long time. It is since the 1995 Women’s Conference that it has been aimed at. It has had a lot of feet in the earth, but we think something is being corrected because the current bill contains a global action plan for institutionalizing gender mainstreaming.

Of course, we support this proposal. Nevertheless, we deeply regret that the initial proposal of the government in the committee was weakened by an amendment of the majority factions.

The initial proposal was actually intended to collect all data that could be related to gender. This is now limited to the so-called relevant data. The situation abroad, especially in the Scandinavian countries, shows that sometimes surprising conclusions have been reached, for example from figures collected within departments, which initially were not thought to be so relevant.

Therefore, it is regrettable that the data is now limited to certain figures, and that not all the figures relating to gender – and which are collected anyway – are tracked.

I hope, however, that the amendment I have proposed in the committee and which was rejected, after an evaluation of this draft, will be able to amend the law if necessary. In a year or two, I may, hopefully, be able to get back on it.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to this point.

In fact, the amendment we submitted contains the phrase “only when relevant”. That amendment was made because we were approached by people from the National Institute of Statistics, who said that all beginnings are difficult. They want to start collecting data for a number of things, but they can’t do it for everything at once. I must say that it has taken more than ten years before we have been able to reach the current result. If we now confused everything through registration, we would not benefit from it either.

Mrs Lanjri, I take the example you mentioned in the committee. In the Scandinavian countries, this data collection has begun much earlier. I assume that with time there will also be things here, and that possibility is also open. For this purpose a request can be submitted. If there is a dispute as to whether the request is relevant or not, the opinion is requested from the Equal Opportunities Board. So what you say now is still possible, despite our amendment. Our goal is actually the same.

Mrs Lanjri, you have submitted an amendment that states that the data should only relate to persons. My colleague Turtelboom and myself thought that we did not intend the same.

But I think we have the same goal. I think we will come together with time.

Was the room sufficiently informed?

Mr. Speaker, I am simply intervening to say that the CDH will support this bill, even though we believe that it is always possible to go further and refine the texts.