| dc.description.abstract | The EU and its Member States have made considerable progress towards the development and implementation of gender equality policies. The adoption of the European Pact for Gender Equality and the 2020–2025 EU Gender Equality Strategy are tangible signs of the EU’s commitment and efforts in this area. However, many challenges still hinder the concrete realisation of gender equality in the EU. These include, among other challenges, persisting power relations and structural inequalities between women and men and widespread gender-based violence. Over the past years, a rise of highly coordinated, well-funded organised ‘anti-gender movements’ has equally threatened the achievement of gender equality goals and stood in the way of tackling these challenges. These movements not only fuel an overall rise in intolerance and hate (against women and their attained rights and against lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) people), but they also fuel support for regressive laws and policies running against international and EU human rights standards and commitments on gender equality and non-discrimination, on the fight against gender-based violence and on the promotion and protection of sexual and reproductive health and rights. The backlash in some Member States against the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (the Istanbul Convention) is a timely example. All this points to the need to continue to strengthen the EU’s approach to gender equality. Against this background, this paper provides a synthetic overview of the evolving EU’s policy and legal approach to gender equality to date, with a view to inform a fact-based discussion on how to support the concrete realisation of gender equality in all of its dimensions across the EU. | en_US |
