BRUSSELS (AP) – Don’t be fooled by Angela Merkel. The German chancellor may be the most powerful leader in the European Union, but she hardly paints a true picture of the place of women in EU politics.
EU leaders meet on Saturday to divide top jobs for the next half decade, and after years of paying lip service to increasing equality between the sexes, the problem of inequality is still plain for all to see at these meetings – where are the women?
“If you look at the family picture of these European summits for the past few years, there always is this blot of grey men in lookalike suits and the color of only a few women,” said European political science Professor Hendrik Vos of Ghent University.
One summit won’t change much, he said. “It will certainly not be the major breakthrough for women.”
Within the EU’s bureaucracy, Baroness Catherine Ashton now is the most recognizable woman among the EU officials. The foreign policy chief flies across the world and hobnobs with the great and powerful to deal with anything from Iran’s nuclear program to the fighting in Ukraine and the Middle East.