Successful EWL breakfast meeting on Gender Mainstreaming in the European Parliament

December 9, 2015

[Brussels, 9 December 2015] On Tuesday 8 December, the European Women’s Lobby (EWL) organised a breakfast meeting on the topic of gender mainstreaming for Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). A legal obligation for the EU, gender mainstreaming is a proactive process aimed at realising women’s human rights in all policy areas, as women and girls are still facing inequalities and discrimination in all aspects of life. The EP has committed to gender mainstreaming and established a Network of MEPs responsible for implementing gender mainstreaming in each EP Committee. There is also a High-Level Group on Gender Equality and Diversity within the EP, responsible for the promotion of gender equality in all internal aspects of the EP. And the FEMM Committee is currently working on a report on gender mainstreaming in the EP. The EWL breakfast meeting was therefore very timely! 30 people attended the session, including 7 MEPs from the EPP, ALDE, Greens, S&D and GUE/NGL groups, as well as Secretariat staff, political advisors, European NGO representatives and private sector actors. During the meeting, participants got to hear about why and how all policy is gendered, which is why gender mainstreaming is necessary across all committees and across all policy areas, since more than half of the population is female. The EWL also brought attention to some examples of good and bad practices that demonstrated the need of a thorough, broad gender analysis to be incorporated in policy making processes, where the effects for different stakeholders and gender stereotypes need to be taken into account. There was also strong emphasis placed on the need for an intersectional analysis, since women are not a homogenous group but have varying needs and obstacles facing them. The EWL meeting aimed at helping all stakeholders to put their gender glasses on! The meeting spurred interesting and constructive discussions about resistance towards gender mainstreaming and possible steps forward and we hope to see more opportunities for collaborations for gender equality in the upcoming year! You can find here the PPT presentation of the meeting, as well as here the EWL guidelines and resources on gender mainstreaming. EWL briefings to MEPs on women’s economic independence, women in decision-making, violence against women, women’s diversity, and EWL general briefing to MEPs on equality between women and men in the EU and work with women’s organisations. And below a video on “Sustainable Gender Equality – a film about gender mainstreaming in practice”