The number of women employed at the most senior level in the European Commission has increased from five to 18, the Social Affairs Commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn, told the European Parliament. He said the improvement was due to positive action by the Commission. However, officials in Brussels maintain that a problem exists at middle-management level, where only one in five is female.
Mr Flynn was speaking during a Parliament debate on the publication of the first annual report on equal opportunities for men and women within the EU.
The Parliament's response to the report said that while the Commission had tried to increase the proportion of women on its staff, obstacles remained for those who tried to apply for Commission jobs.
The strict age limit placed men and women on an unequal footing. This was because most highly-educated women who decided to have children did so when they were about 30, so they would not be available to apply for senior positions at that age.
The report said women were not generally interested in taking up demanding jobs abroad before their children had grown up, but by then most were over 40 and beyond the Commission's age limits.
"An age limit which is apparently non-discriminatory between the sexes thus really leads to segregation," it said.
Meanwhile, in a debate on violence against women, the parliament called for "zero tolerance" of pornography.
The author of the report on violence against women, a Swedish MEP, Ms Marianne Eriksson, won support for 1999 to be designated a year against violence on women.
Other MEPs called for increased training for police and judges on how they might respond to violence.