 PANEL DISCUSSION Gender equality in the workplace: women’s lawyers’ role FRIDAY 12 OCTOBER
Developed nations may have the legal framework to provide gender equality, but unless the laws are actually applied then true parity between the sexes will never exist, a participants in a debate on sexism in the workplace was told. Simply having the laws in place to ensure women had equal rights and opportunities was not enough - they needed to be put into effect to create genuine change, Dominique de la Garanderie, a lawyer and former president of the Paris bar, told the participants. She said: "Women first need to be recognised as human beings in their own right and on equal terms with men before equality can be addressed. Rights alone are not enough, they have to be put into effect.” "There is an argument over whether accepted standards of behaviour precede laws, or whether laws precede accepted standards of behavior,” she added. “But either way, it is only the law that actually imposes rights and strives to ensure they become common practice, and it is up to judges to enforce them." Ana Palacio, senior vice president of the World Bank in Spain, agreed with the principle, but said she believed having enforceable laws on gender equality was still not enough. She praised France for the legal doctrine it had given to the world in the realm of human rights and women's rights, but said her native Spain's culture of social and public pressure had also gone a long way to stamping out 'machismo'. "We have the laws, but in my country young women journalists also began publicly shaming people who discriminated, and this social pressure helped make changes,” she said. "Developed countries are almost there in terms of a legal framework, but we have to go beyond just having the framework to make a difference." On the question of whether the law should impose quotas for gender equality in employment, Palacio said: "I don't agree with this. It makes people ask 'Is she there because of a quota, or there because she deserves it?' This makes me very wary of the system of quotas. "Instead, pressure from society is more effective, with companies with a good policy being praised and those with a bad policy being named and shamed." But when Palacio suggested that boardrooms around the world were full of women were 'better' than men, de la Garanderie accused her of being a 'sexist'. Palacio quipped back: "Patience is a force that may have worked for Francis of Assisi, but it doesn't for us women." True equality was not about numbers, she said, it was about attitudes. She added: "If I appear before court where all the judges and lawyers are men, I don't mind as long as I know that there are other courts out there that are staffed by women. And if I walk into a boardroom full of men, I don't mind either, as long as I know there are also boardrooms out there that are full of women." Claire Toumieux, a partner at Flichy and Associates law firm in Paris, agreed that European initiatives on gender equality had achieved great strides forward in 'theoretical equality' but also stressed that the law needed to be enforced to bring about real changes. "We are there in terms of legistlation, but effective equality is still not there," she told the audience. Moderator Gilles August, a founding partner of August and Debouzy law firm in Paris, was keen to remind the participants of France's crucial role in the progress of women's rights around the world. He said: "France gave the world the idea of equality, but only after a draft bill in our country in 1801 actually forbidding women to read. At the time they could technically go to university, but they weren't allowed to do the high school diploma in order to get there. "And it was not until the end of the 19th century that there was an effort to change this. Then in the first part of the 20th century we saw the establishment of the female high school diploma, but still it was not the same as the one for men. True equality in education and access to the professions was only really reached here in 1975, when mandatory co-education was brought in for all high schools," he added. Palacio was eager to stress the contrast between the rights of women in western nations and the 'appalling' state of affairs in other parts of the world. She said: "Just remember when we are theorising about all this that in France and Europe, we are privileged women. We lose perspective on how privileged we are because many women in the world have no legal existence at all. "So while we are arguing over maternity benefits and higher pay, there are millions of girls in the world whose mothers did not even take their names to the registry to register them as a human being," she concluded. ________________________________ |