[Brussels, 9 June 2015] Today, the European Parliament (EP) adopted a resolution calling on the European Commission to adopt an EU Strategy on women’s rights and gender equality, with clear targets and monitoring mechanisms. The European Women’s Lobby (EWL) welcomes the call of the EP to see women’s organisations involved in the development and evaluation of the Strategy, and financially supported in their work. We also welcome the attention given to the multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination that women and girls face in Europe, and requiring specific and consistent approaches to make sure that not one single girl or woman is left behind.
The EP resolution highlights several of EWL recurrent demands on equality between women and me:
- It calls for an EU legal instrument to tackle all forms of violence against women and calls on the European Commission to accede to the Istanbul Convention. It also calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop policies to reduce the demand for prostitution and to establish programmes to exit from prostitution, building on the 2014 Honeyball resolution.
- It calls for strong measures on work-life balance, including on maternity leave, and for measures to promote women’s employment, including through affordable care and childcare. It calls on the EU to close the gender pay and pension gaps, and combat women’s poverty.
- It calls for an EU agreement on the directive on quotas, and for measures to increase parity at all levels, including in high-level EU positions.
- It calls for high-quality and accessible services in the areas of health and sexual and reproductive health and rights, safe and legal abortion and contraception, and sex education.
- It calls for action against gender stereotypes and for the promotion of non-stereotyped image of women.
The EP resolution calls for consistency between the EU internal and external action on equality between women and men and women’s rights. It highlights the gender dimension of key policy fields, such as migration, asylum, peace and security, food, trade, environment.
For the EWL, the new Strategy should give the vision of a Europe realising equality between women & men and promoting women’s and girls’ human rights, building on the values of the EU enshrined in the Treaties & the Charter of Fundamental Rights, & on universal & un-negotiable principles that the Member States share through their endorsement of international women’s human rights instruments. To realise its vision, the Strategy should provide a strong architecture for women’s human rights through the establishment of mechanisms to ensure accountability, monitoring, evaluation & coordination between the different actors involved at national & European level, & mechanisms for the systematic implementation of gender mainstreaming.
We hope that this call from the EP, together with the call of many women’s organisations and EU ministers for gender equality, will lead to the adoption of a new strong Strategy for equality between women and men.
