In August, the European Commission published a roadmap setting out policy options to address the challenges of work-life balance faced by working families. This initiative focuses on parenthood rather than gender equality, aiming to facilitate a balance between home and professional responsibilities.

Essentially, the Commission is reframing a policy to revise the Maternity Leave Directive that it failed to build consensus around. The Commissioner is now shifting attention from women to parents and from child bearing to productivity.

The aim is to address the low participation of women in the labour market by modernising and adapting current EU legal and policy framework to today's labour market; to help parents with children or those with dependent relatives better balance caring and professional responsibilities; and to increase women's economic independence. 

Proposed initiatives include: extending flexible working arrangements to both parents and women and men with caring responsibilities and strengthening the enforcement of those rights; inviting the social partners to assess their agreements on parental leave, fixed-term work and part-time work; better enforcement of and new incentives for take-up of parental leave by fathers; improvements to the Maternity Leave Directive; and the introduction of carers’ leave.

But perhaps this is not the best timing for a new initiative focusing on the labour market argument?

The German Minister of Finance has recently asked for a repatriation of power from the Commission, particularly on market regulation and some countries, such as the UK, already have proposals around ‘closing the gender pay gap’.

Such matters may well leave the European Commissioner trying to walk a very thin line, as her plan will not really be about equality, but about ‘flexibility’ at work, about productivity gains, about getting the number-crunchers rather than ‘social change’ activists excited.

By taking out the ‘motherhood penalty’ for female labour market participation, the idea is to expand the labour force participation of women amidst and ever aging work force and, thereby increase contributions, tax revenue, and productivity.

Womens’ rights are now seen to be set on the margins of the discussion. The emphasis would be on child care, easing the return of mothers into the workforce, preventing unfair dismissals, allowing working hours and work place flexibility, making work easier to do. Making it easy, not quite empowering, is the idea!

Moving from rights-based to economic discourse will no doubt be interesting. The Commissioner  will be arguing that it is better to add women into the labour market than to bail out countries; better to bring a lower common pension denominator than slash mens’ pensions; better to speak of ‘flex-security’ than part-time work and working poor. In essence the political argument in Brussels is that the issue of maternity leave as a woman’s right has been given up in the form of a ‘not good enough’ Directive, to pursue a ‘what’s good for business, is good’ Directive.

The Commissioner may get her Directive through, but will that do something for women?

Tony Richman