Seminar: Gender Equality in Education

In 1995, the Beijing Platform for Action targeted gender segregation in education, curricula, enrolment and retention rates of women in its action points to further the Education and Training of Women. Yet the European Commission’s Strategic Engagement for Gender Equality (2016-2019) reminds us that “gender inequalities in education persist.” As such, gendered study subject preferences and the gendered discrepancies in educational performance and patterns of participation are targeted as important policy areas for the European Union seeking to ensure gender equality for both men and women.

The collective experience of equality bodies as gathered in the Equinet perspectives Persistence of Discrimination, Harassment and Inequality for Women (2015) and Harassment on the Basis of Gender and Sexual Harassment (2014) echo these concerns. In order to find local solutions, the 2015 Perspective suggests that “equality bodies can promote proactive approaches” in a number of fields, such as:

• creating and sustaining a culture of equality within organisations such as workplaces, educational settings and services providers;
• exchanging good practices to promote an education free of gender stereotypes and rejecting all forms of violence;
• ensure school curricula are gender sensitive;
• collecting information on the prevalence of harassment and sexual harassment in schools to provide evidence-based recommendations to legislators.

In order to follow up on this proactive approach, Equinet’s Working Group on Gender Equality will hold a seminar to exchange good practices and deepen equality bodies’ expertise on successful measures that may be implemented locally to promote gender equality in the educational setting.

Objectives

The seminar, co-organised by Equinet and the Czech Public Defender of Rights, will take stock of the experiences of equality bodies with ensuring gender equality in education. It will build on previous work by Equinet in this field.

In particular, the Seminar aims to:

• Build capacity of equality bodies’ staff members in understanding, promoting and ensuring gender equality in the educational setting.
• Exchange good practices on proactively promoting gender equality in education and getting gender equality concerns in educational curricula
• Discuss and exchange experiences with and case work on discrimination in education
• Update equality bodies on recent EU and international developments related to promoting gender equality in education

Registration

Register to the meeting via this link by Wednesday 4th May.

Contact: Katrine Steinfeld, Equinet Policy Officer
katrine.steinfeld@equineteurope.org

For more information: http://equineteurope.org/Seminar-Gender-Equality-in