8 March is International Women’s Day. It’s marked across the globe and also at Brussels Airport actions were staged today to promote greater equality between women and men.
Women and men handed out leaflets calling for equal pay. Wage differentials between women and men are big in the aviation sector as in many other industries. Women earn up to 40% less as they often work parttime to juggle job and family.
“It’s a cliché: often women take care of the kids and suggest they are prepared to work parttime” says Elsie Bergenoots of the socialist union. Men work fulltime. The cliché: man at work, woman at home. That needs to be trashed!”
The government should do more to promote equal pay: “We see this in Sweden and Norway where both men and women have a right to stay home a lot longer to raise the kids without really losing out financially. That would be progress here!”
Passengers at the airport seemed to agree with Elsie. “First and foremost women and men should earn the same” says one couple queuing at the check-in desk. “For ages in Brussels they have been saying we’ll do something about this, but it never happens”.
A lady from Japan tells our reporter that in her country there’s still no equality and the situation is even worse than in Belgium, while a Dutch passenger insists women should have confidence in their own power and have self-confidence and trust in themselves: “Then a Women’s Day would no longer be necessary!”