Women In Development Europe+
WIDE+
WIDE + aims to achieve a feminist vision WIDE+ is committed to the enforcement of women’s rights, as part of a larger struggle for social justice and the human rights of all.
ID: 746070127103-68
Lobbying Activity
Response to Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2030
11 Aug 2025
The current geopolitical context is becoming more and more uncertain that increases a diversity of risks that could materialize in Europe and elsewhere. These risk vary from a risk to becoming part of violent conflict or war, increased climate disasters and the threat thereof, economic recession, and societal shutdown due to problems with the digital infrastructure connected to many provisions in daily life to mention a few that could have huge impacts. Within Europe we see a growing political instability that is connected to a seemingly growing distrust to those with other views as well as xenophobia; there is a polarisation among populations of European countries. All in all, there is a strong need for a strong political and governing transnational leadership that is able to set out a course towards stability based on sustainable economic growth and protection of human rights. As a European feminist network, we fully endorse the overall political project that is embedded in the European Union. Our objective here is to provide evidence-based feedback that connects with EUs current direction. After the previous elections of the European Parliament the focus on enabling economic competitiveness has increased. We want to make the argument that the prospect of further economic advantage of the EU lies in the combination of environmental, human rights and labour standards with macro-economic policies that balance reproductive and productive economic activities. There is no better time to work on inclusiveness and more equality as when the economy faces more uncertainty. An approach of fostering sustainable economic competition depends of fair and trustworthy rules for economic interaction in order to sustain societal acceptance, promote economic innovation, and limit indirect costs of unregulated policies (for example societal damages such as harmful health impacts because of industrial production). We want to stress that promoting gender equality and protecting womens rights is not something that is a distraction from EUs economic agenda; to the contrary, we believe that fully supports this agenda. We are proposing recommendations around ten overall recommendations: 1. Keep previous agreed language on gender equality, LGBTQI rights and womens rights in place. 2. Introduce or strengthen institutional mechanism to monitor gender equality measures. 3. Ensure adequate and sustainable financing for feminist, in particular women-led civil society. 4. Promote the democratic participation of women from an intersectional approach. 5. Develop an intersectional approach and incorporate it into law. 6. Include measures to develop a gender equality approach in digital transformation. 7. Advance an inclusive and gender-just green transition. 8. Enable access for all women to health, including sexual and reproductive health and rights. 9. Reducing socio-economic inequality through an intersectional approach. 10. Promote peace processes, transnational solidarity and prevention of violent conflict. For more about WIDE+, we would like to suggest our website: http://www.wideplus.org. The feedback here provides answers on behalf of WIDE+ to the call for evidence in the context of the online consultation towards a new Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2030. It was prepared in August by Gea Meijers, WIDE+ General Coordinator, through bringing together the evidences and recommendations from various projects and working groups.
Read full responseMeeting with Sebastian Tynkkynen (Member of the European Parliament)
8 Jul 2025 · Tekoäly ja rekrytointi
Response to Gender equality in the EU
13 Feb 2020
Recognize migrant women’s rights activists and address institutional racism
WIDE+ has heard that the upcoming Gender Equality Strategy will address intersectional discrimination and gender stereotypes. As a European feminist network that reaches to approximately 300 associations through its membership with a strong membership (and partnership) of migrant feminist groups and associations, we would like to stress the urgent need for political action to address the multiple discriminations faced by migrant women. Our concept of migrant women includes refugee, trafficked, undocumented and other women and girls that have arrived in the EU at some point.
From our ongoing collaborations with many migrant feminists and other feminists working with migrant women, we would like to put forward the following urgent issues that need to be addressed. We are attaching a longer list of recommendations that was developed by Civil Society for the UNECE review of Beijing+25, SDG and the WPS agenda, last October.
The new Gender Equality Strategy (GES) should:
• Encourage member states to address multiple discriminations migrant women face in accessing women’s rights most urgently in the domain of healthcare, political and civic participation, labour, and justice. A major problem migrant women face is the discriminations in terms of addressing violence against them. Refugee women and girls, others without documents or in the process of obtaining legal citizenship have a huge additional barriers compared to other women and girls to protect themselves from violence and to seek justice. Policies of governments contribute to these additional barriers.
• The GES must make more budget available to support member states to a) systematically include an intersectional dimension in all of their gender equality strategies to address the specific barriers migrant women and girls face (including the GES of the EU), and to b) systematically include a gender and antiracist perspectives in all the programmes of the EU and member states to receive and integrate migrants, as women and girls are often still not considered enough with their specific needs and contexts, such as the particular (sexual) violence they face.
• The GES should encourage the EU and member states to provide more direct funds to the work done by migrant women and girls in supporting their communities and other migrants. This will also help address gender stereotyping, which is often negative for migrant women, with articles that either ignore, victimize or place them in a negative context. The best way to address stereotyping is to empower migrant women in their civic contributions. In our projects we each time discover that there is so much work done by migrant women and girls in supporting their communities and other women and girls through direct support, advocacy, giving voice to their experiences, etc. Another common discovery is that governments often contribute minimally to the services and actions provided by self-organized migrant women and girls. This needs to change.
• The GES should include empowering migrant women as a policy objective that should be backed by a communication prepared by the European Commission.
• Migrant women face racism in their treatment by institutions, such as immigration offices or social workers, but also when they work or want to access work. Strict measures and penalties should be taken on racial profiling; the deconstructing and addressing institutional and structural racism is our final recommendation.
On behalf of,
WIDE+ and its Working Group on migration: Atina, Mujeres Con Voz, Network of Latin American and Caribbean Women, Kulu Denmark and GADIP in Sweden.
World March of Women of Belgium
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