This Past Friday (International Women’s Day) the EPO's Staff Representatives Reminded Everyone That "Discrimination of Women" is Rampant at the EPO (Whose Female President Had Been Pushed Out by What She Later Called Alphamales)
THE understaffed EPO is granting too many patents for increasingly corrupt kangaroo 'courts' to shallowly assess with a presumption the plaintiff is right (and increasingly for patent trolls that aren't European but prey on European companies with the help of large litigation firms).
European citizens stand to lose while Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos (and the people they front for, wine/dine with etc.) become super-rich, riding a wave of European software patents and other fake patents. It's kind of like organised (or pre-planned) plunder, looting, passage of power and wealth. They say that it's "the law" while in reality they break the law, violate constitutions, rip apart international conventions and so on. It's just white-collar criminality - that's what this is. The last thing the "f---ing president" (what President Campinos calls himself in front of women) cares about is women's rights.
It does not matter if a patent gets granted by (or to) a man or a woman; the problem is the patent monopoly. Either way, almost every corporation and institution piggybacked International Women’s Day as an exercise in PR. The EPO was no exception and the Central Staff Committee wrote the following to staff:
International Women's Day, 8 March 2024
Dear colleagues,
On this important day, we would like to raise awareness about the ongoing efforts of the CSC to improve gender equality and women's rights at the EPO. To honour International Women’s Day, we have prepared a publication that takes a closer look at the topic of part-time work, particularly in relation to gender differences.
In addition, your staff representation would like to keep you updated on other topics we are actively working on:
- Support of women’s health at work
- Improvement of the career perspectives of colleagues on maternity leave
- Improvement of CIGNA Guide to cover regarding reproductive health
- Restoring adequate support for childcare and education costs
You are welcome to contact us and provide your feedback on any of the items listed above or bring to our attention any topics you would like us to address concerning gender equality at the Office.
The respective publication contains some graphics and we're reproducing it today as HTML, GemText, and plain text:
Zentraler Personalausschuss
Central Staff Committee
Le Comité Central du PersonnelMunich, 08.03.2024
sc24018cpCelebrate International Women’s Day with us!
On International Women’s Day, we would like to “Inspire Inclusion” and open up a discussion on the topic of part-time work. We encourage you to share your experiences and thoughts on what we, staff representation and the Office, can do to improve and support inclusion.
Gender differences in part-time work
Across the world, part-time work remains to be taken-up by women at a much higher rate than by men. There are many reasons for this difference, with the largest one cited as the disparity of caring responsibilities for children or incapacitated adults. The Netherlands, Austria, and Germany have some of the highest percentage of part-time workers in Europe, along with the biggest disparity between women and men.
Part-time uptake at the EPO
The EPO is no different on this matter. The graph below shows how the percentage of male and female staff members at the EPO who opt to work part-time for at least a part of the year has developed over recent years. When compared to the statistics compiled by Eurostat, the use of part-time work at the EPO [warning:
epo.orglink] is not only notably lower than the averages in our host states, but also lower than in the EU. It can be seen below that there is a consistent and significant difference between the working patterns of men and women, with almost a third of our female colleagues working part-time at the peak in 2019, whereas only 1 in 18 men were working part-time in the same year.
Changing trends
Interestingly, while the data shows a reasonably stable number of colleagues working part-time over the period 2015–2019, since 2020 the trend for women shows a significant reduction. Unfortunately, we have a number of reports recently of part-time work either being revoked or rejected by the administration, and we hope that this pressure from management is not a significant contributing factor. Should you have experienced such issues, your staff representation welcomes you to contact us for support.
Rewarding of part-time workers
One of the additional factors that may impact the decision of a colleague to take up part- time work is the discrimination of part-time workers when it comes to the reward exercise. The figures below show the differences of pensionable reward allocation between men and women, and in this area improvements have been made. It can be seen that the gap is closing, however it is yet to be eliminated.
However, the difference between rewards for part-time workers and full-time workers is a consistent problem across all years of the new career system. This is an issue that has been raised to the administration, yet there seems to currently be no intention to improve the situation. This discrimination is essentially a discrimination of women, because of their higher rate of part-time uptake as illustrated above. So we call on the administration again to make progress in this area.
Support from and to your local staff committees!
Again, we hope to open a discussion on the topic of part-time work in relation to gender equality at the EPO, and we invite your comments. In addition, we are working on the following gender specific topics and welcome your input;
• Support of Women’s health at work
• Improvement of the career perspectives of colleagues on maternity leave
• Improvement of CIGNA Guide to cover regarding reproductive health
• Restoring adequate support for childcare and education costs
The Central Staff Committee
As can be seen, there is no parity at the EPO and this is further worsened by policies. This is an actual choice, not a choice made by women but by the men who run the EPO. █