During this year's European Parliament election in the Czech Republic as many as 33 parties fought for mandates, though only five counted in the pre-election opinion polls: the Czech Social Democratic Party – ČSSD (30,9%), the Civic Democratic Party – ODS (25%), the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia – KSČM (11,4%), the Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People's Party (7,2%) and the Greens “Strana Zelenych” (6%). Two more parties were visible during the campaign: the European Democratic Party (EDS) and the European Democrats (SNK-ED). Of those seven significant parties only four placed women in positions 1-3 of electoral lists: women were leaders of the lists of the Christian Democratic ODS and EDS, while the Greens placed their candidates alternatingly (respectively on positions 2., 4. 6. and 8.).

Interestingly, none of those parties, except the Strana Zelenych, apply any obligatory quotas while putting together their electoral lists. They usually do not include the issues of equality between women and men in their programmes, nor do they have specialised sections of their parties dealing with equality (alternatively, if such sections exist, they remain inactive). The women's fraction of KDU-ČSL has been active since Marie Jílková, became its leader and started to convince members of the party about the necessity of so-called affirmative actions aimed at increasing the political participation of women. ODS is of the opinion that there is no need to deal with issues of equality, because in the Czech Republic women and men have equal rights. The party's stance on the issue can be best summed up by a recent statement of its leader, who, commenting on the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All, said that women should choose whether they want a career or children, because they cannot have both.

Equality issues in the European Parliament election campaign

Of the broad range of equality issues, only one was brought up by political parties during the election campaign: the political participation of women. Admittedly, compared to traditional campaigns for the national parliament, this time the subject had fairly good visibility. Some parties (Strana Zelenych, KDU-ČSL and EDS) begun to pay more attention to the number of women on their lists. In their election slogan,  KDU-ČSL directly referred to their female candidates - “A third of us are women: experienced politicians and fresh faces” - as they advertised their list. However, in the programme itself they failed to refer to the issue of equal rights. Only their candidate in the fourth place, Marie Jílková, who is head of the party's women's fraction, spoke in her campaign about combining professional career and family.

In the fourth position Strana Zelenych had a sociologist, well known in the Czech Republic and abroad - Jiřina Šiklova, a signatory of the Charter 77 and the founder of Gender Studies, the first feminist organisation in the Czech Republic (in her campaign she focussed on the issues concerning the elderly). The candidate from the second position, co-chairperson of the Strana Zelenych Kateřina Jacques, declared during the round table talks on political participation of women, that she would like to instil in the Czech Republic the political culture of European institutions, which seriously treat the issues of equality. Furthermore, the party in its programme postulated actions aimed at enabling women to combine career and family; emphasised the necessity to eradicate gender stereotypes; postulated increasing the number of women in politics; proposed initiatives supporting elderly women; it asked candidates whether they believed there were too few women in politics, and published the answers on its website.

The equality issues were brought up during the campaign of the KSČM, particularly by Věra Flasarová standing for re-election as the party's candidate, who advertised the issues on her election billboards.  The party itself tried to convince the electorate with slogans like “Yes to equality of women and men” and “Fight all forms of discrimination”.

The unchanging incumbency

Four Czech women won mandates in this year's European election: Zuzana Borzobohatá and Olga Sehnalová from ČSSD, Andrea Češková from ODS and Zuzana Roithová from KDU-ČSL. The percentage of women among the MEPs from the Czech Republic fell from 20,8% to 18.2% - it is one of the lowest results among all EU countries. According to experts from women's organisations, it happened because of the lack of binding instruments securing fair gender representation. The Greens did, as the only party, apply the system of alternating women and men while constructing their electoral lists, but it was not of much help, since they proved to be the great loser of the election – they were the only parliamentary party not to not have won a single mandate. Nevertheless, it is worth emphasising that the most popular candidate was Jiřina Šiklova, who won almost 20% of the votes obtained by the list. The KSČM used to recommend placing at least one woman within the top three positions on the list, but the recommendation did not apply during this election. The first woman was placed on the fifth position and she did not win a mandate. That was probably the reason why the party promised to turn the recommendation into an obligatory internal regulation.

Unfortunately, two female MEPs from the previous term who were very much interested in equality issues, Vĕra Flasarová and Jana Hybášková, failed to be re-elected. For the organisations working in the area of equality between women and men, this signifies a necessity to search for new allies. The task will not be easy, since most of the twenty two Czech MEPs have been re-elected, and in the previous term they had not dealt with the issues of equality between women and men at all. Most of the MEPs (as many as nine), joined the new conservative fraction in the EP – the European Conservatives and Reformists, which does not bid well, since the group openly renounces the policy of equal opportunities and counteracting discrimination. There is hope for cooperation with the MEPs who joined the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats and the European United Left – Nordic Green Left, since both those groups are preoccupied with the issues of equality.

The future of equality policies in the Czech Republic will be influenced to a far greater extent by the election for the national parliament, which is to be held in the Autumn of this year.

The material prepared by Agnieszka Grzybek, on the basis of reports by Alexandra Jachanova-Doleželova and Linda Sokačova from Gender Studies.