The Austrian Ombud for Equal Treatment

The spring edition of the Member in the Spotlight features the Austrian Ombud for Equal Treatment.

The Ombud was established in 1990, starting with competences exclusively for equal treatment between women and men at work. Since 2005, it is competent for all discrimination grounds mentioned in the EU Equal Treatment Directives except disability.  Dr. Ingrid Nikolay-Leitner, Head of the Ombud and Equinet Board Member kindly agreed to present the Austrian equality body. In the interview, she tells about the history  and evolution of the institution and the current challenges they are facing in today's society.

1) Can you tell us a bit more about the history and evolution of your equality body?

2) How aware are citizens in your country about the role of equality bodies? Do they trust you? Do they know that you are there for them? Approximately how many complaints you receive each year?

3) It has been few years that you are competent to tackle discrimination on several grounds, but in the Austrian society you are still rather perceived as a gender equality body. How are you dealing with this image? What kind of efforts do you make to reach other social groups?

4) Which cases are you currently dealing with? Which problems are you experiencing, if any? Tell us the most interesting/significant ones (both success stories and more difficult ones) and, if possible, give us references.

5) What do you think are the most urgent discrimination issues in Austria that your institution is facing nowadays? Racism, xenophobia, sexism?

6) Do you have special needs and/or requirements to be addressed to Equinet? Can you assess to which extent and how Equinet is helping your equality body? Is it giving an added value to your functioning?

7) What will be your other major projects and initiatives planned in 2010?

1) Can you tell us a bit more about the history and evolution of your equality body?

In 1990 the provisions on the Austrian Ombud for Equal Treatment as well as the provisions on the Equal Treatment Commission were inserted into the Equal Treatment Act which had already been effective since 1979 . One of the main reasons for the founding of the new institution was that almost nobody claimed about discrimination despite of the existing legal provisions.

The Equality Body started with three employees in 1991. Between 1991 and 2004, the Ombud was exclusively competent for equal treatment between women and men at work. Between 1998 and 2002, four regional offices opened with the same competences.

Since 2005 the Ombud for Equal Treatment is a multiground body with responsibility for all discrimination grounds mentioned in the EU Directives except disability, a field of action where a separate body is active. There are also separate small institutions dealing with discrimination cases within the civil service in the competence of the Länder, due to Austria’s federal structure. Meanwhile the Ombud for Equal Treatment has 27 employees including the regional offices.

2) How aware are citizens in your country about the role of equality bodies? Do they trust you? Do they know that you are there for them? Approximately how many complaints you receive each year?

As soon as people get to know about our service, we also inform them about the main guidelines of our counsel and support: independence and confidentiality.

Those guidelines have been followed strictly from the very beginning and have built solid trust in the equality body meanwhile.
We are still facing the problem that a considerable percentage of the population – and especially those who suffer from disadvantage and social exclusion – do not know about the service of our institution.
During the period with competences only for employment and gender, we concentrated our information work on social partners, trade union members in enterprises and opinion leaders in women’s organisations.
Meanwhile we do a lot of networking and awareness-raising with NGOs, state institutions and opinion formers in all fields of action, but since our personnel and financial resources are still quite limited, big information campaigns are dreams for the future.

Our clients mostly get the information about our service  through personal relationship to somebody who knows or has experienced successful support.
In 1991 the Ombud received around 250 complaints (ranging from request for information on the phone to a formal procedure before the Equal Treatment Commission). Up to 2009 the number has increased to around 4500 complaints per year.

3) It has been few years that you are competent to tackle discrimination on several grounds, but in the Austrian society you are still rather perceived as a gender equality body. How are you dealing with this image? What kind of efforts do you make to reach other social groups?

During the first years after the change this caused considerable problems and there was a noticeable uncertainty among the ‘traditional’ clients of our institution as well as among new target groups. Meanwhile – and after a lot of information work from the Ombud – the majority of the opinion formers and stakeholders are aware of our competences. Unfortunately, this is sometimes not the case with journalists, who often still are solely interested in gender issues – in employment and with regard to goods and services. A special problem is that the competences of the regional offices have not been enlarged since they are too small to cope with all discrimination grounds without additional personnel resources – something which the Ombud is still waiting for.

Besides the information work with different stakeholders, an important step to improve the situation was a completely new and consistent corporate design for our written information that is also used for all powerpoint-presentations, gadgets, and for the pdfs on our website (unfortunately still not for the frontpage, since the Ombud is part of a ministry).
In 2009 we started with an invitation for small media representatives in the field of racial discrimination to discuss our practical work with them and to raise their interest for that part of our work. Similar events in other fields of action are planned for the future.

At the end of 2009 we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Equal Treatment Act with a big conference in Vienna and local events in all regional offices. The conference in Vienna was a very good opportunity to inform all relevant stakeholders about the full range of our competences, the goals we already achieved and about the needs in the future.

4) Which cases are you currently dealing with? Which problems are you experiencing, if any? Tell us the most interesting/significant ones (both success stories and more difficult ones) and, if possible, give us references.

The Austrian Ombud for Equal Treatment as such does not select cases, but the experts working in the institution are specialised in specific grounds or fields of action.

Those busy with discrimination cases in relation with goods and services are struggling a lot against discotheque-owners who reject persons who do not look like the majority of Austrians and with landlords who are not aware that they are not completely free to choose to whom they want to rent. One of the major successes was an intervention after a complaint about the allocation of familiy allowances that were not automatically paid to families if the first names of the children sounded ‘foreign’. Now there is an official order that prohibits such an approach.

Our experts dealing with discrimination in employment on the grounds of ethnic origin are still quite busy with job advertisements excluding ‘Non-Austrians’ as well as hiring procedures with the same purpose. Women wearing a headscarf for religious reasons face similar problems regardless of their qualification. In one case when a woman wearing a headscarf wanted to work in a cleaning shop and the Equal Treatment Commission had decided that her rejection was no discrimination because of security reasons, the Ombud succeeded through a specific court procedure to find a compromise and the woman was employed after an agreement about how to wear her headscarf.
Besides, there are a lot of cases concerning harassment. We try to negotiate extrajudicial settlements with compensation for the victim.

Out-of-court and friendly settlements is a special strength of the institution also in the field of gender in employment, where unequal pay, discrimination in promotion and sexual harassment are still the main problems.
A more recent phenomenon of multiple discrimination on the grounds of gender and age is the fact that especially highly qualified female employees in Austria are often forced to retire at the soonest possible age, regardless whether they want to work longer or at least have sufficient pension to afford their living.
Cases like this have to be brought before the courts for a binding decision before employers will change their attitudes. It is a big problem for the Ombud that we have very limited competences with regard to court procedures and it will be one of our most urgent projects in 2010 to find a solution to at least be able to get to court with test suits.

5) What do you think are the most urgent discrimination issues in Austria that your institution is facing nowadays? Racism, xenophobia, sexism?

We really try not to prioritise discrimination issues but in a very general way one could say xenophobia and the gender pay gap are the biggest topics – and at the same time issues which are at least talked about – while discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation or discrimination of transgender persons e.g. in employment exists, but is almost no issue in public discussion so far.

6) Do you have special needs and/or requirements to be addressed to Equinet? Can you assess to which extent and how Equinet is helping your equality body? Is it giving an added value to your functioning?

The experts in the Austrian Ombud for Equal Treatment have always been quite active in Equinet and have very much appreciated the range from basic to very specific information and exchange of experience that is offered. We rely a lot on ideas and stimulation we get from partner organisations and experts for the day to day work, casework as well as information, networking and awareness raising.
Besides the mutual influence between EU regulations as a benchmark for national equality policy on the one hand, and expertise and opinions of equality bodies as source of information EU policy on the other hand, are vital.

7) What will be your other major projects and initiatives planned in 2010?

We expect an amendment to our Equal Treatment Act to become effective at the end of the year and we are quite busy with expert negotiations in relation to it. Besides the leveling up for the discrimination grounds age, religion and sexual orientation in the field of goods and services – hopefully without too many exceptions – , the amendment will contain provisions about pay transparency between women and men in enterprises. This implies two additional fields of action for our institution, for which we will have to set the preconditions during this year, as well as for court representation in test cases.

The priority in awareness-raising during this year will be on harassment and pay equity.

Thank you Dr. Nikolay-Leitner for this interview.