There’s a rumour going around at the moment that Jose Manuel Barroso might be having some trouble persuading Member States to nominate as many women for the 2009-14 European Commission as were there in 2004-9.
The same old arguments -for example that there are not enough women of sufficient quality for the key roles – have resurfaced.

So a group of eurobloggers, twitters etc. have got together and decided to do something about it…  Here’s the blurb from the site they’ve launched which can be found at www.genderbalancedcommission.eu:

The idea of this website is simple. Every 5 years a new team of European Commissioners is chosen, normally as a result of a messy behind the scenes deal between the Member States. Last time this happened in 2004 we were lucky to end up with 8 female Commissioners. This time around it looks like the gender balance will be even worse.
We believe in gender balance. Neither men nor women should be under-represented in political bodies. Especially not in one of the most important political bodies of the European Union, the European Commission, representing half a billion European citizens. To challenge this we are proposing a Commission of 26 competent women!
Rumours have been circulating that the European Parliament might refuse to approve the team of 27 Commissioners unless it contains at least as many women as the outgoing Commission. We support the European Parliament in doing this, to push for a gender balanced executive, but instead of proposing simple quotas of women, we here put forward individual names from each and every EU member state. We believe that in order to achieve gender equality, women of flesh and blood should be promoted, not only quotas or numbers!

European Voice has now reported on this campaign, and the twitter stream is already tweeting politicians asking if they will support the campaign.

What I like about this campaign is that it’s so sensible and moderate – it’s not demanding that 50 percent of the new Commissioners should be women (this sort of thing tends to lead to accusations of quantity over quality), only one third. 
However, perhaps the unique feature of this campaign is the request that, instead of just backing an initiative about quotas, anyone can suggest a female potential candidate from any of the member states, to demonstrate that a well-qualified and fully female Commission is possible, although with Barroso at the head as he has already been reappointed.
Given recent reports that big hitters in national politics don’t see going to the European Commission as a career-enhancing move (although all the Commissioners that returned home to roles in national governments from the 2004-9 Commission including Lord Mandelson may beg to differ), and the surprise choice of candidate being put forward by Germany showing that the pool of people that can be considered is potentially much bigger than just politicians from the mainstream parties in national politics, there should be no reason that 9 women can’t be found from the number of women in pubic life across the EU.  And if this campaign identifies at least 26, so much the better.

Do web campaigns work?  The short answer is to ask you have you seen the increased number of atheist and religious adverts on the sides of buses in the last year in your town too?
But this campaign is not just trying to persuade the heads of state that appoint the national candidate Commissioners to put forward women.  It also asks the European Parliament – which has a veto over the appointment of the European Commission and, in 2004, managed by threatening a veto of all to exert power ove the choice of certain individuals – to exercise this influence if there are fewer women put forward than in 2004.

So please, the nonsense that “gender doesn’t matter” needs to be got beyond – it does matter. 
Women bring a different sort of perspective to decision-making – but they don’t all bring the same different perspective. 
We suffer when the people taking decisions all have the same sort of outlook and lack of comprehension of the implications for others of what they decide. 
Having one extra woman compared with the last 5 years won’t change that of itself, but having access to a wider pool f talent, wide range of different backgrounds and life and work experiences can enhance the qualities of the decisions made.
So that’s got to be good for all of us. 

There’s loads of ways to join in – look at #gbc09 or follow @genderbalance on twitter, join the group on facebook or just start by looking at the website…
And being a multi-party, non-partisan initiative, I’m happy to back it!

Related posts:

1. Getting competitive… getting in to the European Commission
2. Enlightened Euroscepticism requires the enlightenment bit…