!!!Frauenschutz

Working Women, Protection of: For a long time the historically weak 
position of the individual employee in negotiating working conditions 
called for state intervention, especially for the benefit of women in 
the form of protective provisions in the Austrian labour law. Too long 
working hours and insufficient protection of women before and after 
giving birth, serious discrimination against women in pay as well as 
sexual harassment at the workplace have long been key problems in 
labour laws specifically affecting women. Only slowly did lawmakers 
pass legislation which helped rectify these conditions. The process of 
European integration has given further impetus to improvements in the 
labour situation of women. EU directives and decisions of the European 
Court of Justice have attempted to reduce the cases of gender-specific 
discrimination. Austrian labour law includes the following provisions 
governing work performed by women: the law governing night work for 
women, passed in 1969, which, with a few exceptions, prohibits  Women, 
Night Work by; the Protection of Mothers Act of 1979, which prohibits 
pregnant or nursing mothers generally from working between 8 p.m. and 
6 a.m. as well as on Sundays and holidays; the Equal Rights Act of 
1979, aimed at stopping every kind of gender-based discrimination by 
prohibiting any type of discriminination which cannot be justified on 
objective grounds. The law also made sexual harassment at the 
workplace illegal. In reality, however, this law has not been as 
effective as had been hoped, in particular with regard to equal pay 
for women.


%%language
[Back to the Austrian Version|AEIOU/Frauenschutz|class='wikipage austrian']
%%

[{FreezeArticle author='AEIOU' template='Lexikon_1995_englisch'}]
[{ALLOW view All}][{ALLOW comment All}][{ALLOW edit FreezeAdmin}]