Gender Equality Strategy for the Council of Europe 2024-2029. What’s new?

This month, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted the third Gender Equality Strategy for the years 2024-2029. We reached out to Julia Ostrovskaya, Legal & Political scientist and expert, member of Women's Major Group, to give us the lowdown on the new strategy.

The Gender Equality Strategy 2024-2029 is structured around the six strategic objectives addressing existing and emerging issues. The following objectives provide a foundation for the work of the Council of Europe and its member states in the field of gender equality over the coming years:

1. Preventing and combating gender stereotypes and sexism.

2. Preventing and combating violence against women and girls and domestic violence.

3. Ensuring equal access to justice for women and girls.

4. Achieving balanced participation of women and men in political, public, social and economic life.

5. Ensuring women’s empowerment and gender equality in relation to global and geopolitical challenges.

6. Achieving gender mainstreaming and including an intersectional approach in all policies and measures.

While the Strategy contains aspects of previous documents, and in some cases advances them, the new Strategy also contains several new innovations.

According to the new Strategy, the growing influence and use of information technologies in all fields, including artificial intelligence, can open new opportunities but also create new problems from the perspective of gender equality and women's rights. Thus, addressing issues related to artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the priority areas of the new Strategy.

Attention is also focused on the digital dimension of violence against women and girls, including on social media and the internet. This includes online sexual harassment, doxing, trolling, covert filming, recording of attacks and rapes, forms of online stalking, password theft, and forms of psychological violence, such as online hate speech, hostility, insults and death threats.

Furthermore, the new Strategy pays particular attention to the consequences of global crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, armed conflicts and climate change, which have exacerbated existing gender inequalities and created new risks. It emphasises the importance of combating sexualized and gender-based violence in conflict and post-conflict situations, as well as providing support to women and girls from various segments of society as important participants in conflict prevention, resolution, assistance and recovery efforts, as well as in building sustainable peace.

One of the priorities of the Strategy is the recognition of gender equality and women's rights as a fundamental element of multilateral relations and crisis management, including in policies, strategies and programs aimed at ensuring durable peace and inclusive development.

Another important component of the strategy is the recognition of the value of both paid and unpaid care work, as well as promoting the benefits for society of investing in quality care services.

Actions are planned to encourage employers as well as social partners to promote concrete voluntary measures conducive to the equal sharing of unpaid care and domestic work, as well as to work–life balance for women and men.

The strategy makes a significant contribution to efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development until 2030, as well as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action.

Member countries of the Council of Europe will need to allocate sufficient resources to actively work towards the goals of this strategy and address the negative consequences of existing gender inequality.

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