European Trade Union Committee for Education

Trio Presidency Declaration on Equality between women and men, signed by Ministers of Health and Labour from Estonia (current Presidency of the Council of the EU), Bulgaria, and Austria (two future Presidencies in 2018), calls for strengthening EU discussions on gender equality and strengthening gender mainstreaming in all EU policy areas. The Declaration was signed in Tallinn on July 19, 2017, during the informal meeting of the national ministers to discuss work-life balance policies.

For the next year and a half, the Presidency Trio commits to supporting the cooperation between EU Member States and the European Commission on gender equality and gender mainstreaming policies, ensuring the achievement of equal economic independence for both men and women, and intensifying the work toward the elimination of gender-based violence. Among other activities, Estonian Presidency will adopt the Council Conclusions on gender segregation in tertiary and vocational education, training and the labour market, while Bulgarian Presidency will focus on women in the digital world and work-life balance package. Finally, Austrian Presidency will address the topic of youth and gender equality, including monitoring progress in the area of “girl-child” as identified in the Beijing Platform for Action.

ETUCE welcomes the Presidencies’ commitment to address the gender segregation in the education and labour market. ETUCE also stresses that in order to make the teaching profession more attractive to both men and women, the status of the teaching profession in the EU countries needs to be enhanced by increasing education personnel’s salaries and improving their working conditions.