In the position, CESI welcomes the European Commission’s initiative to develop an EU Roadmap for Women’s Rights and demands specific measures in the areas of violence and harassment, equal pay and economic empowerment, women’s access to leadership positions, a fair distribution of care work and gender equality in care, and quality education and digital inclusion for women.

As such, CESI considers, most notably, that the roadmap should:

• highlight that the newly adopted EU Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence shall be fully implemented at the national level and stress that the EU should fully implement and enforce the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women within the remit of its competences.
• set concrete actions to close the gender pay and pension gaps, starting with a full implementation and enforcement of the EU pay transparency directive 2023/970.
• pave the way for further gender quotas in companies and public services beyond the narrow scope of the EU Women on Boards Directive 2022/2381, to include public administrations and senior management across all sectors and not just in large stock-listed enterprises.
• seek to enhance the economic value of care work and ensure fair wages, working conditions, and access to social security for care workers – which are by large majority women.
• develop initiatives to encourage women’s participation in STEM fields, digital industries and entrepreneurship – and likewise seek to encourage more men to pick up training and employment in traditionally female oriented sectors, such as in care.
• address AI-based and algorithmic discrimination of women in employment and beyond, too, so that AI tools are trained with gender-neutral data, algorithms should be gender-neutral in order to achieve balanced male/female parameters in AI and algorithms.

CESI Secretary General Klaus Heeger said: “As CESI, voice of over 6 million workers across Europe, we urge the European Commission to adopt a comprehensive, ambitious, and enforceable Roadmap for Women’s Rights that goes beyond declarative commitments and establishes concrete legislative, financial, and policy measures. It is imperative that the Roadmap considers a complete set of implementation and enforcement tools, ranging from hard tools like legislative proposals and infringement procedures to soft policy tools such as the European Semester, EU funding and support for trade unions and inclusive social dialogue at EU and national level. In terms of EU funding, a rigorous agenda of gender budgeting across all EU funding mechanisms, funds and instruments will be instrumental.”

The full contribution is available here.