whereas considerable gaps between women and men persist in all other aspects of work quality, for instance reconciling professional and private life; whereas the employment rate for women with dependent children is only 62,4%, as compared with 91,4% for men; whereas 76,5% of part-time workers are women,

Regrets that the Green Paper does not devote enough attention to gender issues; considers that the present adequacy gaps in pensions between men and women are the result of persistent inequalities in the labour market, such as periods of unemployment, sickness, care duties, the pay gap between men and women, the overrepresentation of women in precarious and part-time jobs and barriers to reconciling work and private life; therefore calls on the Commission and Member States to continue their efforts to eradicate these inequalities and ensure long-term equal treatment for women and men with respect to pensions, for example through the in ...[+++]clusion of maternity leave and care for elderly family members as actual work giving rise to an entitlement to retirement benefits for men and women;

These distinctive differences point to the significance of the availability of child-care and other care provisions for raising the participation rates of persons with care responsibilities - at the present mainly women.

The Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) in Portugal is accessible to all legally resident individuals and families suffering from serious economic distress as well as to all young people with family responsibilities and mothers or pregnant women below 18 years.

The aim of this second group of provisions is to allow men and women to combine their family roles with labour market participation and to ease the transition between employment and full- or part-time in-family caring and vice versa.

Whereas inadequate provision of child-care services at prices affordable to parents and other initiatives to reconcile responsibility for the family and the upbringing of children with the employment, or with the education and training of parents in order to obtain employment constitutes a major barrier to women's access to and more effective participation in the labour market, on equal terms with men, the effective participation o ...[+++]f women in all areas of society and the effective use of their talents, skills and abilities in the current demographic situation;