The EWL has a number of Working Structures that focus on the implementation of our policy and advocacy work in accordance with the EWL priorities as outlined in the Strategic Framework. Our Working Structures serve as dynamic platforms that bring members together to collaboratively tackle our most critical priorities and key topics. These specialised teams serve as engines of progress, providing a space for our members to pool their expertise, insights, and resources. Through these Working Structures, we foster a spirit of collaboration and synergy, allowing us to make substantial strides in advancing our shared mission and objectives. It’s within these dedicated groups that innovative solutions are conceived, strategies are refined, and initiatives are propelled forward, ensuring that our collective efforts have a lasting and meaningful impact.
The Feminist Economics Working Group is dedicated to advancing a transformation of the economy grounded in principles of equality, well-being, social justice, and care – seen as a universal collective imperative for both women and men. They aim to achieve this by sharing and developing expertise in various aspects of feminist economics, drawing from existing work within the EWL membership and cultivating new perspectives. The group actively collaborates with feminist academics across disciplines, engaging not only with those specialising in feminist economics but also experts from diverse fields. Additionally, they forge connections with other stakeholders involved in alternative economic matters, fostering a collaborative environment for the exchange and pooling of knowledge. The group also plays a pivotal role in preparing and formulating proposals to update the ‘Purple Pact’, EWL’s position on a feminist economic model, for wider dissemination and discussion within the EWL membership.
The Group advocates for institutional mechanisms that ensure the effective implementation of gender mainstreaming and the equal political participation of women. It is committed to advocate for parity democracy both at national and EU levels, employing a multifaceted approach that involves engagement with various channels such as national governments, EU presidencies, and preparations for the European Parliament elections. The experts actively share knowledge on developments in national elections that impact women’s representation in politics, as well as on the European Parliament elections and women’s participation therein. The group extends its support to EWL’s objectives at the national level through actions like content dissemination and collaboration with national stakeholders, including Members of the European Parliament. Additionally, they oversee the monitoring of the implementation of the Women on Boards Directive at the national level and ensure that EWL’s initiatives pertaining to Women in Decision-making are meticulously planned and executed in close collaboration with EWL member organisations.
This group’s objective is to eradicate gender stereotypes and eliminate male violence against women and girls. This encompasses providing them with unfettered access to their sexual and reproductive health and rights, ultimately affording them a life devoid of sexual exploitation. These aims are aligned with the principles outlined in the CEDAW Convention, specifically Article 11(f), which underscores the entitlement to health protection and secure working conditions, including safeguarding reproductive function.
The purpose of this taskforce is to draw attention to regional challenges, invite reflections on ways to engage with EWL, exchange best practices that strengthen and highlight the role and contribution of women in critical crisis situations that directly affect both the population of the respective areas and their vicinity, as well as the activity of member organisations.
The Observatory brings together a dynamic group of women who have extensive expertise and experience in the area of violence against women, coming from different countries in Europe and appointed by the European Women’s Lobby members. This extensive and Pan-European expertise and experience has been instrumental for the European Women’s Lobby to design its advocacy and policy activities on the basis of a comprehensive understanding of the situation in Europe regarding the different types of male violence against women (VAW), and the challenges and opportunities that women and women’s organisations face. The EWL Observatory gives also a feminist space for sharing knowledge and information; bridging regional initiatives; developing common tools; stimulating reflection and mobilising members and women’s organisations.
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The European Women’s Lobby (EWL) is the largest umbrella organization of women’s associations in the European Union, working to promote women’s rights and gender equality.
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European Women's Lobby
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to