29th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe (Strasbourg, 20-22 October 2015)

Speech of Ms. Laura Pérez: Deputy Mayor of life cycle, feminisms and LGBT policies of the Barcelona City Council

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First of all I want to say thank you for the opportunity to share with you this space for discuss on the increasing poverty of women and on the responsibility that local and regional governments have in combating this phenomenon. In the Barcelona city government we are especially concerned with this issue.

The feminisation of poverty has been an ever-present reality in our societies, also in Barcelona, but we are currently experiencing an increase in poverty due to the economic crisis beginning in 2007 and due to the responses which have been offered in the form of austerity policies. 

The impact of the economic crisis has been harmful for a large part of the population of Barcelona, but gender disaggregated data reveals that the effects are not the same for women as for men. Currently, in Barcelona, 64.5% of women have an income below 19.000 euros a year, and the risk of poverty rate among women is 19,2% vs. 17,3% amongst men. Likewise, long-term unemployment affects women especially. 30% of unemployed women in the city have been unemployed for more than two years and almost 47% for more than one year. However, these percentages fall to 25,4% and 42,1%, respectively, in the case of men. 

The material impoverishment of women is also due to the fact that their participation in the labour market is under worse conditions, with more part-time work and lower wages. The salary gap between women and men in Catalonia and in the Spanish state continues to be at 25%.

However, it is also important to highlight that poverty does not affect all women in the city equally. It especially affects women who are single heads of households. 40% of women living in this type of household are at risk of poverty. It also strongly affects women over 65, who receive an average pension which is 38% lower than the average pension received by men of the same age. And it also strongly affects women of foreign origin. For this reason, it is essential to introduce an intersectional perspective in the analysis and reduction of this phenomenon.

To the on-going crisis, we must add the effects of austerity policies, which have been dramatic, and which have significantly increased the social inequality and gender gap. The cuts in day care centers, in care for dependent persons, and in social investment destined to children and families in general, have significantly increased the care workload carried out primarily by women, which implies an important reduction in their job opportunities.  I do not want to overwhelm you with facts and figures. As you know, in these times of crisis gender patterns are reinforced, and familist welfare states such as ours, previously meager and nowadays crumbling, shift the responsibility for welfare and care from their systems of social security linked to a weak labour market, towards families, where women's traditional roles as caregivers are reinforced more than ever in exchange for zero compensation. And lets not fool ourselves, this process of forced return to the household is perceived by some as extremely functional for the economic system at this time.

As pointed out in the resolution, to advance in reversing this situation it is necessary to act from the various administrative levels and in a coordinated manner. But I would also like to highlight that cities today present themselves as a structure of opportunity.  Their proximity to citizens, their capacity for social innovation and their position relatively removed from the decision-making centers from where austerity is imposed, turns them into an administrative body in a good position to counteract the policies imposed by supranational and financial institutions on the national states.  However, cities are an opportunity provided that there is political will to place municipal government structures at the service of the needs of citizens. With the will to do this, Barcelona En Comú[Barcelona in Common] ran in the March 24th 2015 elections, and we did it as an alternative, democratic citizen-led coalition. 

One of the departments that we created in the city council is the Life Cycle, Feminism and LGBTI one which I have the honour of being responsible for. With the objective of tackling the feminisation of poverty and inequality between women and men, we have begun to deploy the strategy of gender mainstreaming in the internal structure of the city council, which will allow us to mainstream gender measures to all municipal policies, including those destined towards poverty reduction, which are a priority for our government. This mainstreaming strategy will be implemented through the creation of a new "Department of Gender Mainstreaming", under the responsibility of the first deputy mayor. 

At the same time, we have created a budget team with a gender perspective under the “Departament of Economy and Revenue” in order to ensure that a gender perspective is effectively taken into account in the execution of policies and to ensure that gender measures translate into concrete realities and not just good intentions.

Another of the mainstreaming strategies, very much oriented towards   addressing a comprehensive, ethical and fair economic development, and which will have a foreseeable impact on the improvement of working and living conditions of women, is the creation of the Directorate of Politics of Time and Economy of Care, within the Commission of Cooperative and Social Economy. 

Finally, as a measure specifically aimed at the reduction of poverty among women- which is understood as multisectoral and multidimensional- we have recently convened the first meeting of the Inter-sectoral Roundtable on Women's Poverty, to set up a dialogue amongst the various entities, unions , experts or women of a specific profile that have accumulated experience and knowledge in this area, in order to define a strategy for action in the medium and long term, with objectives, lines of action and a budget. This roundtable will address the feminisation of poverty from four sectoral perspectives that we have identified as critical: the labour market, the sustainability of life, the right to housing and the right to health.

I would not like to overextend myself, and take time away from other presentations, so I will be happy to discuss informally with you the methodological details of this Inter-sectoral roundtable and the various proposals that we are working on in the Barcelona city government which I mentioned above.

However, to finish, I would like to draw attention to the danger of austerity measures and the danger of imposing public debt as a disciplinary measure on institution's behaviour. Cities and their peoples can resist up to a certain point, but we cannot be bastions or spaces of resistance to this siege for very long. Or at least, this is not desirable. We are convinced that the collaboration of all the administrations is fundamental to build frameworks of coexistence and wellbeing, and with this objective in mind we hope to find once again the “Hugh of Europe”.

Thank you very much.