Roadmap for Equality between Women and Men 2006 - 2010

The opinion points out that 'the attainment of the Lisbon objectives requires the contribution of both sexes, not least women. This includes their participation in the labour market, greater family responsibility to be assumed by men, and the possibility for both men and women to reconcile family and work commitments, which is likely to have a decisive impact on the future demographic development in the EU'.Moreover, the opinion underlines that 'to achieve genuine gender equality, the problem of under-representation of women in political and economic decision making must be tackled. Local and regional authorities have a key role to play here because gender equality in participation in politics and in economic life should be built from the bottom up. In this context, the CoR suggests that the idea of quota systems should be discussed at the different levels of governance. However quotas by themselves cannot solve the problem of inequality and discrimination, but they may be one element of a broader and integrated strategy to break up existing structures which exclude women from decision making at the moment'.

http://coropinions.cor.europa.eu/CORopinionDocument.aspx?identifier=cdr\ecos-iv\dossiers\ecos-iv-005\cdr138-2006_fin_ac.doc&language=EN