Studies have also shown that social measures such as maternity leave help increase the female employment rate by 3-4%.

The female employment rate is high.

The European Union has now moved closer to the Lisbon Strategy goal of reaching a female employment rate of 60% by 2010.

With demographic matters that are coming more and more to resemble an emergency and an economy that demands higher and higher female employment rates, these measures are a common sense response.

One of them referred to the effect of public spending cuts on aspects such as health and education, where female employment rates are very high, and the fact that those cuts can harm women's job chances.

The Commission’s spring report has recorded the increase in the female employment rate over the past three years to 55.6%, in part because of the progress made on improving the availability and accessibility of care facilities for children under three.

A report from the Commission shows that since 1995, the contribution of women to economic growth in the EU has increased by a quarter, and that the female employment rate increased by 7.1% over the last decade and reached 59.1%.

Lastly, I shall refer to the principle of equal opportunities: a lasting increase in the general employment rate is only possible if the female employment rate is strongly improved, and this will require effective measures to square the demands of family and professional life.

In 2008, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that while female employment rates have expanded and gender employment and wage gaps have narrowed nearly everywhere, on average women still have 20 percent less chance to have a job and are paid 17 percent less than men.