Which issues discussed by the Women's Rights Committee over the last term have been the most important?
 
Personally, I find them all important and we have adopted more than 40 reports. But those that I would like to highlight are those on the Lisbon strategy, demographics in Europe, family-work balance, women and poverty, migrant women, women in jail and the influence of this situation on family life. There were also reports on women in conflicts areas and of course we dealt with the issue of women in important posts and women in science.
 
A lot of reports concerning gender equality are non-legislative. Do they have any impact on people's lives?
 
I think that reports of the Women's Rights Committee are very important as they provide a kind of background research of the issue in EU. They propose some solutions and these reports can be used in the work of other committees. So they do not enter directly into EU legislation, but they serve as a source of information.

Only 3 out of 40 members of Committee are men. Why is that so and what would you do to change it?
 
The reason why women have not yet achieved equality, despite the fact that they have been trying for decades, is the idea that they can do it by themselves, that they do not need men. Since the beginning of this Parliamentary term we started talking more and more that it is essential to include men on the issue. The equality of women must also be in the interests of men. For example take work-family balance: if we do not include men, women will never achieve their goal. When men realize that women expect and assume that men would participate, men will also be more interested to become the members of Women's Rights Committee.
 
What are the topics you and your fellow MEPs on the Committee will be working on in the future?
 
The above mentioned topics are long-term issues. But when I see the current economic and financial crisis, which is very likely to turn into social crisis, the topics that will be discussed in future are women and poverty, work-family balance and intergeneration solidarity. We have also to bear in mind that at the current demographic situation, one of the solutions, which I do not consider as being paramount, is immigration. So the topic which will be discussed a lot in next parliamentary term will be also female immigrants and family reunification.