OPEN FORUM : MEETING EUROPE'S DEMOGRAPHIC CHALLENGE: WHAT POLITICAL STAKES?

The Second European Demography Forum (Brussels, 24-25 November 2008) explored the challenges ahead for the European Union as a result of the ageing of its population. It focused in large measure on boosting the fertility rate, which is well below the replacement level for the Union as a whole (1.5 children per woman, compared with +/- 2.1 in 2006). Against this backdrop, the question in everyone's minds was: What should be done to encourage women to have more children?

This question is of crucial importance. Women's future in the public sphere will depend on how it is answered. So for women, the essential question becomes: How can we keep the drive to raise the birth rate from being transformed into social pressure for women to be relegated to the family sphere alone? Such a development would call into question their achievements of the last 30 to 40 years in the areas of sexual and reproductive rights and the right to the individuality and autonomy resulting from the full enjoyment of economic and social rights. This risk is real. Conservative political and religious forces are already pushing for policies that support a regression, if not the abolition, of such rights.

The European conference in Prague (5-6 February 2009), which follows on from the forum, raises certain concerns with its decision to debate the issue of parenthood as an occupation'. This is nothing new. Associations of housewives, who defend a traditional idea of the family, have made it their key issue for years. They are at odds with more progressive women's associations, which argue that both partners should enjoy the same rights to work and to family life.

The subject is particularly sensitive, because in today's economic and social context there is a considerable danger that women, particularly the most fragile, will end up paying the price of parenthood being recognised as a profession. Such recognition could be used to legitimise their exclusion from the labour market by employers. A number of them are already all too often inclined to look on women as second-choice workers, whose main role is not at the workplace but...