Following Sarah Schlitz's (Ecolo) resignation as Belgium’s State Secretary for Gender Equality on Wednesday, questions have been raised by her office about whether the political fallout was the result of a "double standard."
Schlitz was forced to resign after it was revealed she had used her personal logo on government-subsidised projects, with most agreeing that Schlitz should have apologised for lying to parliament over the mistake. Yet, Schlitz is not the first politician to have been found lying to parliament, and many see this episode as proof of a certain “double standard.”
A cabinet source told The Brussels Times that, ever since Schlitz was appointed, “people have been waiting for the slightest mistake” on her behalf, stating that “I have never seen a male State Secretary treated in the same way.”
RTBF journalist Bertrand Henne penned an editorial on Thursday in which he asked whether Schlitz’s gender played a role in the increased pressure she seemed to be under. Henne pointed out that the last three people to resign from the Federal Government were all women.
In the last year alone, Belgium’s former Budget Secretary Eve De Bleeker (Open VLD) and the previous Minister of Development Cooperation Meryame Kitir (Vooruit) both stepped down. De Bleeker for having provided misleading budgetary figures to the European Commission, while Kitir resigned over growing tensions between her and her staff.
In Schlitz’s case though, many believe that the former State Secretary’s brand of politics had made her an easy target. The feminist author and activist Anna Toumazoff told The Brussels Times that it was “the first time I’ve seen Belgian politicians invest so much energy to oust another politician” which she attributed to “her being viewed as too woke.”
The cabinet source also agreed with Toumazoff's take, explaining that by “addressing complicated and dividing issues,” Schlitz was always bound to be unpopular in certain quarters.
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According to them, this was especially the case for the Flemish nationalist party N-VA, whose MP Sander Loones had lodged the original complaint against Schlitz. In the past, for example, the N-VA’s former Asylum Secretary Theo Francken had been accused of lying to parliament after a member of his cabinet was accused of selling visas. Francken, at the time, did not face similar cross-party onslaught to resign.
This seemed particularly hypocritical to Toumazoff who expressed her worries about the N-VA’s proposal to hand Schiltz’s role to another minister, “with no one to defend the rights of women and minorities in this country.”
