Sittings · Document
Follow up to the European Parliament on the Recommendation to the Council on the EU priorities for the 69th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women
Rapporteur: Lina GÁLVEZ (S&D/ES)
Reference numbers: 2024/2057(INI) / A10-0030/2024 / P10_TA(2024)0075
Date of adoption of the resolution: 19 December 2024
Competent Parliamentary Committee: Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality
Brief analysis/ assessment of the resolution and requests made in it:
The resolution outlines the main recommendations of the Parliament on the priorities for Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) 69. The sixty-ninth session of the CSW deals with the 30th Anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The Parliament recommends an ambitious approach to this session, including the confirmation of a full and unwavering commitment to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action based on a commitment to human rights of women, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, to the implementation of specific and targeted actions for human rights of women and gender equality, including through gender mainstreaming, and to ensuring proper gender budgeting. It stresses that the EU has an important role to play in achieving a gender-equal world through leading by example and supporting partner countries in addressing all types of direct and indirect discrimination and gender-based violence; recalls the importance of the Istanbul Convention, urges the remaining five Member States that have still not ratified and implemented the Istanbul Convention to do so in the shortest possible timeframe, calls on other countries to make progress towards signing and ratifying it and advocates for a consent-based definition of rape. It presses for equal access to and opportunities in all areas of life, to allow women in all their diversity to fulfil their potential and encourages measures that promote women’s participation and gender balance in all high impact sectors including STEM and media. It calls for addressing and monitoring the systemic and root causes of female poverty and ensuring access to social services, including family support services, equal sharing of unpaid care and social responsibilities and work-life balance policies. It calls for gender-responsive labour migration policies and programmes, underlines the importance of enforcing international humanitarian law and recalls the importance of the Women Peace and Security resolution and calls for the further implementation of Gender Action Plan III (GAP III). Lastly, it also calls upon the Member States for a Council Configuration on Gender Equality and Equality.
Response to the requests and overview of the action taken, or intended to be taken, by the Commission:
The Commission welcomes the resolution of the European Parliament and the priorities for the upcoming session.
Most of the requests in the resolutions are directed to the Council, as the Member States, coordinated through the European External Action Service and the EU Delegation in New York, are the negotiators during the UN meeting. The Commission will not be responding formally to the requests addressed in the resolution as it has delivered input to the Parliament through the intervention given by Commissioner Lahbib in the plenary session of the EP in December 2024, just prior to the adoption of this resolution.
There are two specific calls to the European Commission
(p) call on the Commission to further develop and roll out concrete and well-financed plans and actions to address the UN SDGs, specifically those related to gender equality, promoting equality in education;
The UN sustainable development goals (SDGs), including those on gender equality, are drivers for the Commission and help to shape the different legislative and policy actions of the Commission. These notably include EU funding initiatives, such as the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV) programme and the structural investments’ funding instruments, that finance or co-finance a wide range of actions to promote gender equality in the EU as well as the Spotlight initiative and other programmes for actions in international partnerships. The Spotlight Initiative represented an unprecedented effort to end all forms of violence against women and girls, with funding from the European Union. Since its launch in 2017, the programme is now fully implemented through 32 programmes across 5 regions. The initiative developed a holistic approach to end gender-based violence, and its results are significant. Building on its lessons, a new generation of programmes is being rolled out. The EU support to Spotlight phase 2 already amounts to EUR 85.5 million, on top of the initial EUR 500 million from the first phase.
In addition, the Commission developed a methodology to measure EU budget programme-level expenditure promoting gender equality in the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework. In line with the methodology, a programme may qualify for one or more gender scores based on the objectives pursued by its respective interventions. The total of the EU budget, based on the latest results following the aggregation of the 2023 interventions qualifying for each score, has been allocated as shown below.
Score 2: interventions whose principal objective is to improve gender equality corresponded to 2% of the EU budget implemented in 2023 and were included in 13 programmes.
Score 1: interventions having gender equality as an important and deliberate objective (but not as the main reason for the intervention) corresponded to 9% of the EU budget implemented in 2023 and were included in 16 programmes.
Score 0*: interventions having the potential to contribute to gender equality corresponded to 20% of the EU budget implemented in 2023 and were included in 30 programmes.
Score 0: interventions not having a significant bearing on gender equality corresponded to 69% of the EU budget implemented in 2023 and were included in 29 programmes.
Overall, in 2023, 11% of the EU budget contributed concretely to the promotion of gender equality (scores 2 and 1), while 20% has the potential to contribute (score 0*) to this objective. Since the initial application of this methodology, there has been a continuous progress in the gender scores. The percentage of gender score 0* has steadily decreased from 95% to 20%. On the other hand, 69% of the EU budget can be considered not to have a (significant) bearing on the promotion of gender equality on the basis of the information currently available.
One of the key elements to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, as highlighted in the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025, is the combatting of gender stereotypes, which is key in a transformative approach to tackle the root causes of gender inequalities. Empowering women is a driving factor for many legislative and policy actions, including the Work-Life Balance Directive, the Pay Transparency Directive, the European Care Strategy, the Gender Balance on Company Boards Directive as well as in the Directive on combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. Furthermore, the Commission prepared a campaign on gender stereotypes affecting women and men in different spheres of life and allocated funding via the CERV call, including for tackling gender stereotypes in early childhood education and care by awareness raising and training of professionals in this sector. This is complemented through gender mainstreaming of specific actions in other domains including the educational sphere and the promotion of women and girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics / Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (STEM/STEAM), for instance through STEAM/STEM events for girls and a yearly ‘Women and girls in STEM Forum’. The Commission will continue to fight gender stereotypes in different spheres, including in education. As part of its recent Union of Skills, the Commission has presented the ambition in the STEM Education Strategic Plan to attract more girls and women.
(t) urge the Commission to further develop and improve the collection of gender-disaggregated equality data on sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or other belief, political opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation, sex characteristics and gender identity as well as geographically disaggregated data, including on a regional level, to ensure that this data contributes to better and more informed policymaking, and to reinforce the European Institute for Gender Equality both in terms of funding and capacity;
The Commission is working on monitoring the progress in gender equality through collection of gender-disaggregated data, with relevant further breakdowns. The Commission collects information on the EU’s actions in the field of gender equality in the follow up of the Gender Equality Strategy, including through monitoring portal with key data on gender equality. Furthermore, the progress on gender equality in the European Union is monitored through a series of indicators developed by European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) and published annually in EIGE’s Gender Equality Index.
The data comes from Eurostat and other sources, including surveys carried out by EIGE, Eurofound, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and other EU agencies.
In addition, the Commission monitors the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, which is coordinated by Eurostat.
For the EU, most data collection is done at Member States level, under the coordination of Eurostat. The Commission encourages the collection of gender-disaggregated data with relevant breakdowns where possible and within the legal constraints in Member States.
Moreover, the new EU Financial Regulation published on 29 September 2024 now includes a provision requiring that all EU budget programmes and activities, where feasible and appropriate in accordance with the relevant sector-specific rules, be implemented taking into account the principle of gender equality. In addition, the updated financial regulation also mandates that all data collected in relation to performance indicators of the financial programmes should be gender-disaggregated where appropriate.
Finally, the Commission is promoting the collection of equality data beyond gender-disaggregated breakdowns and it is fully committed to step-up the equality data collection covering all six grounds of discrimination. Improving the collection of equality data is a core priority as highlighted in the mission letter to Commissioner Hadja Lahbib, tasking her to work towards this goal, including data comparability across the EU, in cooperation with the Member States. The need for reliable and comparable data is stressed in all the Commission’s initiatives in the area of equality. This includes the Gender Equality Strategy, the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy, the EU Roma Strategic Framework and the Anti-racism Action Plan.
In February 2018, the EU High Level Group on Non-discrimination, Equality and Diversity set up the Subgroup on Equality Data to help Member States improve the collection and use of equality data. The subgroup is made up of national experts dealing with non-discrimination policies, national statistical institutes and equality bodies, Eurofound, EIGE and FRA, who facilitates the work. The Subgroup provides an important forum for Member States and EU institutions to discuss challenges and opportunities in improving the collection and use of equality data. Building also on FRA’s wide-ranging expertise, the Subgroup produced a number of key policy documents to step up the collection of equality data with structural and operational guidelines and technical guidance on collection and use of data on racial or ethnic origin, sex characteristics, gender identity and sexual orientation. Further, it produced a Compendium of best practices on equality data and a diagnostic mapping tool to assess the availability and quality of equality data at national level. The Subgroup continues to work towards improved collection of equality data including its reliability and comparability at European level.
The Commission continues to mainstream equality data in its activities, and it set up the Eurostat Equality and Non-discrimination statistics taskforce to harmonise the collection, use and dissemination of equality data at the European level and plans to issue recommendations by 2025.
The European Commission has provided EIGE with additional human resources as of 2024. In the past couple of years, the Commission has also provided EIGE with additional financial resources at the end of the year to help the Agency face inflation.
The European Commission also continues to work on the improvement of sex-disaggregated data and gender statistics in the field of external action. The EU Gender Action Plan III emphasises the importance of reporting and communicating on results, putting in place a quantitative, qualitative and inclusive monitoring system to increase public accountability, ensure transparency and access to information and achieve better EU outreach on the impact of its work to promote gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment worldwide.