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Bauer: Slovakia Second Worst in EU for Salary Discrimination
Friday 05 March 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, March 5 (TASR) - Despite the fact that the Treaties of Rome already stipulate the right to the same rewards for the same work, discrimination in this respect still prevails in EU-member states when it comes to gender, said Slovak MEP Edit Bauer (ethnic-Hungarian SMK) on Friday after a discussion entitled 'Stop the Violation of Women's Rights'.
"It's coming out these days that salary differences in Europe are extremely persistent and rigid," said Bauer, adding that EU statistics show that differences in gross salaries per hour reach more than 17 percent on average. "Instead of these differences being reduced, they are still being increased. And the differences are even bigger in Slovakia - the second-biggest in the European region, reaching 25 percent," she noted, adding that the situation is worse only in Lithuania.
According to MEP Anna Zaborska (KDH), the differences between women's and men's salaries is most obvious when women return to work after maternity leave. "I see a problem in the fact that society ... hasn't managed to appreciate maternity ... what a woman as a mother has given society - a future labour force," she added.
Zaborska noted that women in Slovakia have the right to turn to a court if their rights are violated when it comes to salary discrimination. "For example, women in Luxembourg recently won several cases in this sphere. Employers had to pay high sums sometimes, but this is also a certain kind of public education," she said.
Violence against women remains the biggest problem when it comes to discrimination based on gender. According to Bauer, 20-50 percent of women in Europe have been victims of physical violence and around 10 percent have suffered sexual violence. "In terms of violence, this is the harshest form of violating women's rights. Of course, men also become victims of domestic violence, but around 95 percent of the victims of domestic violence are women," she stated.
Despite the fact that domestic violence can be observed in every country, very little attention continues to be focused on this problem, added Zaborska.
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