The European Parliament marks the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day this week by reporting on gender equality and female poverty in the EU.
 
However, Liberal Democrat European justice & human rights spokeswoman and Wandsworth MEP Sarah Ludford says that progress is, in many areas, too slow, and looks forward to the next 100 years:
 
“Achievement in liberation of women over the last hundred years is impressive, at least in the developed world. While there are still glass ceilings to be broken in politics and employment and an unacceptable gender pay gap persists, there is much to celebrate.”
 
“But more progress could be made towards equal earning power and reduction in female poverty if sexist assumptions and stereotypes about ‘women’s work’ were finally eradicated and value accorded equally to jobs where women remain in the majority such as social care as to male-dominated construction and industry.”
 
“Woman in the developing world have a much tougher time that most of us in the West. Sex discrimination remains crude and cruel, such as female infanticide in China and India, rape as a weapon of war in the Congo and intolerable controls over women’s dress and behaviour in some of the Islamic world like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Much of our effort in the next 100 years must go towards liberating them from such gross abuses.”   
 
March 7th, 2011