The EWL aims to ensure that women, in all their diversity, have equal opportunities to influence policies and political outcomes and that women’s interests are on the political agenda. This requires that gender equality be mainstreamed throughout the whole policy cycle – when designing, implementing, and monitoring policies. That’s why the EWL co-developed an online training on gender mainstreaming for EU decision- and policy-makers.
Between September and December 2023, the European Women’s Lobby (EWL) launched the first edition of its EWL’s online Gender Mainstreaming Training “Empowering European politicians to materialise gender equality in the EU”. Over 130 people registered for the training and participants included EU decision-makers, EU institutions staff, as well as political parties’ representatives.
The online training was co-developed with Alena Sander (PhD), researcher and co-founder of FEIN – Feminist Research and Consulting, and Sofiia Shevchuk founder of VONA, an educational and consultancy platform focusing on climate, gender and security.
The online training follows the principles of feminist online facilitation, pays particular attention to intersectionality and aims to equip EU and national decision-makers, political parties and their teams to effectively include diverse women’s perspectives in decision and policymaking and to mainstream gender equality in their manifestos, political agendas and legislative work.
The first edition of the training followed an interactive method that took into consideration different experiences, needs and knowledge levels, promoted peer learning and worked with case studies through which participants, in small groups, applied the acquired knowledge to real-life EU politics. The training included:
- Three different online Plenary Sessions:
- Introduction to Gender Mainstreaming
- Gender Mainstreaming work culture
- Challenges in implementing Gender Mainstreaming
- Online policy workshops on:
- Green Transition
- Social Policy
- Digital Transition
- Economic Policies
- Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
- Self-paced learning resources (podcasts, videos)
- A toolkit
The EWL is planning to deliver this training again after the EU elections. Should your organisation be interested in offering the training (or some specific sessions) to its staff, do not hesitate to get in touch and contact Jéromine Andolfatto (andolfatto@womenlobby.org).
