FEPS reaction to the Roadmap on Women’s Rights

On Friday 7 March, the European Commission presented its Roadmap for Women’s Rights ahead of International Women’s Day. This is a key moment for all women and girls across the EU and beyond.

This Roadmap namely places a strong emphasis on care work as a key factor in gender inequality, with increased attention to its economic and social impact. Gender-based violence also remains a strong priority, with stronger commitments to tackling cyber-violence, digital harassment, and sexual violence, including rape, based on lack of consent. Likewise, women’s economic, political, educational, and institutional empowerment is given a central place in the context of persisting gender gaps. 

Whilst the Roadmap makes welcome steps forward in the reinforcement of gender equality commitments, other key aspects remain conspicuously absent: 

🟣 The 2020-2025 Gender Equality Strategy was built on a clear vision: a Union of Equality. That vision is missing in the new roadmap. However, words matter. Even more so as we speak in a poly-crisis context where security threats seem to dominate the agenda of an EU increasingly uniting around defence, at the expense of a more social and feminist Europe.

🟣 The roadmap avoids framing reproductive rights as a fundamental right, reducing it to a mere health issue. This is a political choice. Reproductive rights are about autonomy, democracy, and gender equality. Not just medical services.

🟣 The economic case for gender equality tends to be over-emphasised, shifting away from social justice and rights-based approaches. Gender equality seems to be no longer an objective of its own but a tool instrumental to other policies. However, gender equality is not just about GDP growth. 

Women’s rights should not be framed as economic efficiency measures. They are non-negotiable. 

At a time when anti-feminist movements are gaining influence, the EU must put all its political weight behind a truly committed Union of Equality because a union that does not defend all women and girls, with particular attention to the most vulnerable, simply cannot become a stronger Union. 

Therefore, as the roadmap will shape the next EU Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2030, the European Commission must recognize reproductive rights as a political priority, recommit to a union of equality rather than allowing it to be sidelined by other priorities,, and focus on a human-rights-based approach in line with its fundamental values.

The fight for gender equality is far from over.

Written by FEPS Senior Policy Analyst on Gender Equality Laeticia Thissen.