The persistent gender imbalance amongst key decision-makers in large corporations remains a cause for concern and further targeted action. EIGE biannually monitors the situation in the largest listed companies in each of the 27 EU Member States, United Kingdom and in five of the EU candidate and potential candidate countries that receive support from the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA beneficiaries), as well as in Iceland and Norway.
Political assemblies and executives too often fail to reflect the gender diversity of the population they represent, with women significantly under-represented in many cases. EIGE regularly monitors the situation in parliaments and governments across the EU, the United Kingdom and in the seven EU candidate and potential candidate countries that receive support from the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA beneficiaries), as well as in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
This research note focuses on formal homebased care across the EU. In terms of the care recipient’s perspective, it looks at different aspects of long-term care that determine women’s and men’s opportunities to access long-term care services. Children with disabilities, adults with disabilities and older people are the three groups of (potential) care recipients covered in this study. In terms of the perspective of the carer, this study focuses on the quality of employment in the formal home-based care sector.
This report proposes a model to advance gender equality in Member States by transforming roles and responsibilities in care work. The model supports innovative practice and gender analysis to realise the potential of the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund in the promotion of work–life balance in the EU. This model encourages policymakers, programme managers and project designers to take an expansive view of care.
What is work–life balance and why does it matter? Work–life balance is about striking a balance between ‘work’ and ‘life’. Here, ‘work’ means paid work and ‘life’ means everything else – including, but not limited to, unpaid work, domestic work (cleaning, cooking, washing, etc.), care work (taking care of children, older people, people who are ill, persons living with disabilities, as well as oneself), leisure time and social activities.
This re-edition of the original toolkit was published on 23/03/2022 Gender budgeting is a strategy and a process with the long-term aim of achieving gender equality goals. A tool to track resource allocation for gender equality in the EU cohesion policy funds (Tool 8) has been added to this step-by-step toolkit. The toolkit aims to assist managing authorities in the European Union to apply gender budgeting tools in the processes of the EU Funds under shared management.
EIGE has developed an online toolkit to apply gender budgeting as a gender mainstreaming tool in EU Funds processes. The first three sections introduce the concept of gender budgeting and examine its relevance for the EU Funds. Section 4 offers 11 practical tools on gender budgeting, related to: the EU regulatory framework; national/sub-national programming and project-level support; reporting, monitoring and evaluation.
The Europe 2020 strategy aims to lift at least 20 million people out of poverty and social exclusion. However, this target does not directly acknowledge the gender dimension of poverty and looks unlikely to be met; 23.3 % of women and 21.6 % of men in the EU remain at risk of poverty or social exclusion. More recently, the European Pillar of Social Rights emphasised the right to decent levels of income for people both in and out of work and highlighted that women and men should have equal opportunities to acquire pension rights.
Since 2013, the EU has made several commitments to address gender equality issues in education and training. The Strategic Engagement for Gender Equality 2016-2019 highlighted the need to address gendered choices in study subjects and subsequent careers. In 2015, the EU called for action to tackle gender stereotypes and ensure that teachers are trained to create inclusive, egalitarian and non-discriminatory learning environments.
Gender stereotypes and socioeconomic inequalities continue to impact on access use of preventative and curative health services. For example, while the EU has done work to increase the access of girls and women living outside the EU to sexual and reproductive health services, there has been limited action to promote access to such services within the EU. To date, important unmet mental health needs of women and men persist, and access to sexual and reproductive health services varies greatly between the Member States.
All EU Member States have criminalised some forms of violence against womenand, together with the EU institutions, have worked to strengthen legal frameworks and better determine the scale of the phenomenon. At EU level, gender-based violence is a policy priority, as reflected in the strategy for equality between women and men (2010-2015) and in the follow-up strategic engagement for gender equality (2016-2019).
