Debate: The EU priorities for the th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women
Date: WEDNESDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 2024
Speaker: Helena Dalli
Language: EN

I stress the importance of our institutional cooperation, including through exchanges at all levels. Our preparations for the upcoming session of the Commission on the Status of Women also draws from the work done by the European Parliament, of course, and I am happy that we strengthen our cooperation with the presence of the European Parliament at the CSW meeting. A strong, coordinated approach among all of the EU institutions, both in presence and in content, bolsters the EU’s leadership on gender equality and contributes to advancing women’s rights and empowerment worldwide. The CSW’s main theme on economic structures to combat poverty among women allows to stress once again the need to address the root causes that constrain women’s economic empowerment, while paying attention to the multidimensional and intersectional forms of inequality.  So I will highlight some of our key instruments. The European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan and the EU Gender Equality Strategy include concrete legislative and policy initiatives for women’s empowerment and addressing vulnerability.  Increasing employment rates and the formal economy is vital. In this respect, the action plan includes a sub target to at least half the gender employment gap. Progress is measured as part of the European Semester. The gender-care gap significantly hinders women’s active participation in the labour market. Hence this increases their risks to poverty, including in old age. To tackle this, the Work Life Balance Directive promotes the reconciliation of work with care responsibilities for both women and men. Furthermore, the European Care Strategy promotes affordable, accessible and high quality care services, including through the revised Barcelona Targets for Early Childhood Education and Care.  The recommendation on minimum income and on social protection for all supports women’s resilience. And the Pay Transparency Directive promotes equal pay for equal work of equal value and values women’s contribution on the labour market.  Next to those measures, efforts to increase women’s empowerment should also address specific barriers for women facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. As an example, women with disabilities and the Disability Employment Package provide supportive measures specifically designed to enhance the employment opportunities for women with disabilities. Equally, the Action Plan on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in External Action aims at bridging the gap towards the realisation of SDG 5 and alleviating women’s poverty. It takes a gender transformative, intersectional and human-rights based approach.  GAP III includes an ambitious target to ensure that at least 85 % of all new EU external actions are gender responsive by 2025. The inequality marker aims to reduce inequality in all its intersections by assessing whether and to what extent our support to international partners contributes to curb inequalities. The EU has invested in the implementation and enforcement of GAP III. The EU Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security and the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy through programmes funding human-rights dialogues and activities in multilateral fora.  I also underline the importance of continued efforts to strengthen gender mainstreaming to ensure that gender equality is integrated in all aspects of the Union’s activities. EU funding is an effective tool to promote our policy objectives. Catering for gender mainstreaming in the EU budget is therefore crucial to further advance gender equality. The Multiannual Financial Framework serves as a notable example. The Commission has developed a methodology to track the contribution of all EU spending programmes to gender equality, which was implemented in a pilot phase in the last two draft budgets, and was also included again in this year’s work on the upcoming draft budgets.