By Holly Combe | 24 May 2009, 02:00

As Jess just flagged up, theres only one question in the Vote Match tool that directly relates to gender. If you want to see a more detailed picture of how the manifestos of four of the main European political parties shape up in terms of their consideration of gender equality, the European Women’s Lobby have now published the full results of their gender audit.

The EWL have looked at each manifesto and, in reviewing this content, the overall results give this breakdown:

The European People’s Party (which has no UK member parties) and the European Liberal Democrats both have low scores.

The European Green Party gets an intermediate score.

The Party of European Socialists has a high one.

A system of traffic light signals was used to indicate the results, which were given based on the following central gender-related issues:

1) Does the manifesto mention equality between women and men as a priority?

2) Does the manifesto tackle reconciliation of work and private life with a women’s rights perspective?

3) Does the manifesto mention violence against women in any way?

4) Does the manifesto integrate a gender equality perspective in other areas such as economy; environment, immigration and asylum; foreign and / or security policy?

5) Other - does the manifesto mention other gender equality issues then the ones mentioned above?

To give some more detail, the EWL says:

These results were based on the importance the manifestos give to four issues that the EWL sees as relevant for the realisation of equality between women and men, such as reconciliation of private and working life or violence against women. “It is very disappointing that political parties don’t prioritize over issues of equality between women and men, which should occupy a central place in our democracies. We strongly encourage women to be involved in European politics and to vote in the June elections, in order for the European Union to better fulfill their expectations and to fully contribute to equality in everyday life”, stated Brigitte Triems, President of the EWL.

The Gender Audit also looks at the presence of women on national electoral lists, including as heads of lists. The review shows that in 17 countries, there are more women on the lists than the current % of women MEPs. However, looking more accurately at where women are placed as heads of lists, there are only seven countries where this occurs. The current representation of women in the European Parliament for the four political groups reviewed gives a good indication of the commitment of these groups to the promotion of women in decision-making. For the 2004-2009 legislative period, the Greens had the highest percentage of women with a very near parity 47.6%, followed by the Socialist Group (41.2%) the Liberals (40.4%) and finally the Group of the EPP with only 24.03%.

You can find out more about the audit and also the EWL petition Louise blogged about earlier this week at the 50/50 campaign site and clicking on “Take Action”.

Also, there’s still time to sign the petition if you haven’t already!