Eszter Kováts: Intersecting regional and gender inequalities within the EU
Channel: Nadace Rosy Luxemburgové
Date: 28/06/2021

‘Women are a heterogeneous group and may face intersectional discrimination based on several personal characteristics. For instance, a migrant woman with a disability may face discrimination on three or more grounds,’ reads the new gender equality strategy of the European Commission presented in March 2020 for the period of 2020 to 2025. Some treat the explicit mentions of intersectionality as a positive development, others bemoan its additive nature and its focus on discrimination on multiple grounds rather than on structures reproducing inequalities. But what can East-Central European women expect from the strategy? And how did the pandemic expose the intersections of inequalities between men and women and between the regions within the EU?


Eszter Kováts is a PhD student in Political Science at ELTE University, Budapest. Until recently she was a guest researcher at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She was working in the Hungarian Office of the German political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) from 2009 till the end of 2019. From 2012 till 2019 she was responsible for the Foundation’s gender program for East-Central Europe.