Our membership
The European Women’s Lobby (EWL) is an umbrella network of women’s associations across Europe. We bring together the women’s movement in Europe to influence the general public and European Institutions in support of women’s human rights and equality between women and men. Our European priorities, policies and campaigns are designed to reflect and respond to the needs and realities of women on the ground. To ensure this, the membership of the EWL has multiple layers, with both a geographical spread across Europe and representation of specific groups (such as migrant women, women lawyers, trade unionists, etc.).
The levels of EWL membership are:
- Full membership;
- Supporting membership;
Full members of EWL
The full membership consists of:
- National Coordinations 32 countries, namely 26 EU member states, 4 candidate countries, Iceland and the United Kingdom;
- European-wide organisations.
At national level, the direct EWL membership consists of National Coordinations (1 per country), active for advocacy at national level. Currently, the EWL has 32 national coordination organisations in countries within the EU, in candidate countries, former EU Member States and in the European Free Trade Association countries. The EWL also has European-wide member organisations, which are active in specific fields at European and international level. Today the EWL has 17 European-wide member organisations. EWL’s full members are all umbrella organisations and through this wide network, EWL represents a total of more than 2000 organisations.
Full members are the only members with voting rights at EWL - they form EWL’s General Assembly and can present candidates to EWL’s governing bodies. EWL’s General Assembly sets the policies and priorities of the organisation. While only the first level of membership has voting rights, their members can benefit from direct two-way information flows to and from the European level and involvement in our collective work.
As these organisations are very diverse, the EWL does not follow any particular political, economic, religious or philosophical doctrine. In all areas, member organisations must reach a consensus if they wish to implement joint actions.
Supporting members of EWL
Supporting members of EWL are organisations committed to supporting the aims and objectives of the EWL. Supporting membership is open to women’s organisations that agree with the aims, values and mission of the EWL. They can also be the women’s sections of NGOs/CSOs or mixed organisations that have women’s rights and gender equality as one of their primary objectives. Supporting member organisations can attend our General Assembly as observers but they not have the right to vote nor to present candidates to the governing bodies of the EWL.
EWL currently has 5 supporting member organisations across Europe.
