Educational and occupational mobility of women in the EU

2013/2009(INI)

The European Parliament adopted a resolution on educational and occupational mobility of women in the EU.

The resolution emphasises the need to increase awareness of the situation of women of all age groups in the context of the EU’s policies on education, social integration, means to balance family and working life, migration and employment, poverty, health care and in its social protection policies.

In highlighting the fact that educational and occupational mobility has been recognised as offering added value to the EU, Parliament stresses that the economic crisis is making it increasingly necessary to adapt one’s choice of occupation to what is available on the labour market, and that it is increasingly vital for women to be more adaptable to the demands of new career opportunities when changing occupations.

Noting the fact that the right to live and work in another country of the European Union is one of the Union’s fundamental freedoms guaranteed to European Union citizens by the Treaty on European Union, the resolution points out that workers’ mobility and educational mobility help to deepen people’s attachment to their European citizenship and, at the same time, constitute a European principle for achieving cohesion and solidarity across the EU.

Parliament calls on the Member States to:

  • include provisions to ensure transparency and awareness in the area of women’s rights and the rights of their family members in respect of mobility when designing their national strategies and reform programmes;
  • collect and analyse data on the difficulties, scale and structure of women’s mobility, to draw attention to and promote the benefits of employment mobility on their national markets and the benefits of educational and employment mobility in foreign countries;
  • step up efforts and cooperation with special emphasis on access to information and advice to combat the human trafficking carried out by international networks that recruit workers;
  • monitor the situation of workers who care for children and other dependants and provide enough information to women moving abroad to take on such jobs, including information on access to declared work and training in the relevant area, on social rights, on healthcare, etc.;
  • work together to find solutions to prevent or compensate for the effects that occupational mobility has on some Member States in certain areas (such as the mobility of medical personnel, who are predominantly women);
  • ensure reciprocal recognition of diplomas and professional qualifications and facilitate the simplification of recognition procedures;
  • make pay trends more transparent, so as to avert continuing or widening pay gaps, including their implications for the accumulation of pensions in the Member State of origin and the host Member State;
  • promote vocations and professions requiring scientific, technical, engineering and mathematical skills among women from an early age, for better employability and to assist the transition between education, professional training and employment.

Parliament also encourages the Member States to facilitate procedures for local and regional authorities to, among other things: (i) design and put into practice specific programmes to integrate women and men into local communities and to foster intercultural exchange; (ii) address highly mobile women at risk; and (iii) support social awareness campaigns by non-profit organisations focusing on women in international communities.

The Commission is invited to:

  • monitor and report regularly on how EU funds focusing on education and training, occupational and educational mobility and on labour market participation are being taken up;
  • find a means of integrating the education acquired through youth mobility with jobs matching that education, in order to increase the efficiency of the mobility process in both its educational phase and its occupational phase;
  • broaden and enhance the scope of projects designed to increase the professional mobility of women;
  • support the reallocation of adequate financial resources to programmes that promote women’s employment and better education for disadvantaged groups.

Parliament calls on the Commission and on the Member States to:

  • improve the detection and elimination of the violations of women’s rights in the labour market and effectively punish these violations;
  • take measures to prevent the feminisation of poverty by promoting employment and the spirit of enterprise among women;
  • pay special attention to the problem of poverty among older women caused by the fact that they receive smaller pensions;
  • develop policies, in cooperation with social partners, to eradicate the gender pay gap, that focus on the integration of women in the labour market and promote equal opportunities for mobility;
  • combat gender stereotyping;
  • implement swiftly the youth employment package with a view to fostering early educational and occupational mobility of young women.