Today in Vilnius, Lithuania, EU leaders on gender equality are marking a decade since the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) opened its doors. Senior EU figures such as Helena Dalli, EU Commissioner for Equality, and Evelyn Regner, Chair of the European Parliament's gender equality committee, will join EIGE to take stock of what has been achieved and give their thoughts on how the Institute can help make equality between women and men a reality.  

EIGE was set up to help the EU Institutions and Member States root out persistent inequalities between women and men. EIGE's production of comparable and reliable data enables policymakers to integrate gender equality into all policy areas, from the economy to climate change.

Equal does not mean identical, which is why EIGE has built a library of gender mainstreaming resources to help policymakers take women and men's different needs into consideration. In 2020, EIGE will release a gender budgeting toolkit to help the EU and Member States ensure women and men benefit equally from public resources.

2020 will see the 25-year anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, a UN commitment to which the EU is a signatory. EIGE’s recommendations to help the EU implement this blueprint led to the Finnish government calling for more gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting in all EU policy areas – one of the most advanced political commitments to gender equality. EIGE will present its recommendations to world leaders, international organisations and NGOs at the UN in March.

As the world changes, new challenges to gender equality are emerging. EIGE has been examining the impact of digitalisation, with the 2020 Gender Equality Index planned to focus on issues such as the effect of technology on the workplace. 

Gender equality is written into the EU's founding treaties, yet we are still far from the finish line. This is despite the fact that improving gender equality could bring an extra 10.5 million jobs and 3.15 trillion in GDP by 2050.

EIGE looks forward to continuing its work and hopes the new decade sees further progress towards full equality between women and men, in Europe and beyond.        

For more information, please contact Veronica Collins, phone: +370 5 2157 449, veronica.collins@eige.europa.eu

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Image: Logo designed to mark EIGE's 10-year anniversary