The European Commission’s Roadmap for Women’s Rights, launched in March 2025, lays the foundation for the next Gender Equality Strategy, highlighting past progress in combating violence against women, improving work-life balance, and advancing gender mainstreaming.
It outlines eight principles for the EU to pursue to achieve a gender-equal society. These include the right of every woman and girl to freedom from gender-based violence, ensuring security and dignity both online and offline, in public and private life. It also affirms the right to the highest attainable standards of physical and mental health, equal pay for equal work, and economic empowerment. Women are entitled to balance their professional and private lives, with equal employment opportunities and adequate working conditions. Every girl and woman has the right to high-quality, inclusive education and training, free from discrimination, and the right to actively and safely participate in public life with equal representation. Lastly, the Roadmap stresses the importance of institutional mechanisms that support women’s rights, calling for gender mainstreaming, adequate financing, institutional infrastructure, and gender-sensitive research and planning, all with an intersectional approach.
Thanks to its comprehensive approach, the Roadmap marks a significant step forward in defining clear priorities for advancing gender equality in Europe, tackling longstanding challenges with renewed commitment and focus. It addresses the persistent issues highlighted by the 2024 Gender Equality Index, particularly systemic inequalities and gender-based violence against women and girls, which currently incur an economic cost estimated at 289 billion euros per year. It underscores the EU’s dedication to advancing gender equality through each of its eight principles—an essential commitment to prevent the risk of reversing hard-won progress for generations to come.
Achieving a gender-equal society requires the active engagement of all decision-making actors, alongside strong collaboration with civil society, particularly women’s organizations. WAVE, representing over 1,600 women’s organizations across Europe,endorses the Roadmap in line with WAVE’s commitment to advancing gender equality. Building on this endorsement,WAVE will continue to actively participate in public consultations and propose measures that enhance the Roadmap’s impact, aiming to ensure its integration into the forthcoming Gender Equality Strategy. Our proposals are designed to amplify the Roadmap’s effectiveness and contribute to shaping a robust post-2025 strategy.
- Advancing a vision for primary prevention—shifting the focus from responding to violence after it happens to prevent it altogether. This requires a long-term commitment towards dismantling harmful gender stereotypes, integrating gender equality in education, and supporting feminist self-defence1 and civil-courage initiatives that empower women and girls.
- Further strengthening the roadmap’s commitment to addressing systemic intersectional discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, disability, age, and sexual orientation, while tackling entrenched gender stereotypes and structural inequalities.
- Building on the roadmap’s recognition of intersectionality, the gender equality strategy should explicitly amplify the inclusion of vulnerable groups—such as migrant, refugee, and undocumented women, women with disabilities, rural women, and those in conflict situations—ensuring comprehensive and targeted support for these women and girls in all relevant actions and policies.
- Enhancing the roadmap’s emphasis on the role of feminist civil society by ensuring long-term, sustainable funding for women’s rights organisations and recognition of their indispensable role in advancing gender equality, advocating for policy change, and holding governments accountable.
- Expanding on the roadmap’s focus on young women and girls, in alignment with the Beijing+30 agenda, and ensuring their voices are present in decision-making spaces where policies and programs that impact their future are being discussed.
This vision is consistent with the Roadmap’s dual approach to addressing gender-based violence by integrating gender mainstreaming across all policies alongside targeted actions to eliminate gender inequalities. By addressing both the eight principles outlined in the Roadmap and additional critical issues as proposed by WAVE, the next Gender Equality Strategy can adopt a comprehensive human rights-based framework. Such an approach ensures that all women and girls across Europe can fully realize their rights while thriving in every aspect of their lives.
The post-2025 Gender Equality Strategy has the potential to be a transformative policy instrument, sustaining momentum in the work on gender equality in Europe and positively impacting the lives of millions of women. At a time when women’s rights face increasing threats, the strategy must rise to the challenge with bold ambition and concrete, time-bound measures aimed at dismantling persistent structural forms of gender inequality.
WAVE is committed to actively supporting this process, collaborating with all relevant stakeholders to shape a new Gender Equality Strategy that ensures all women and girls in Europe can fully enjoy their rights and freedoms.
WAVE stands with women.
We will not stop until gender equality becomes a reality for all.
- Feminist self-defence (FSD) is a practice that empowers women, in all their diversity, with the skills to protect themselves from misogynistic violence, both physically and verbally. It provides practical tools to help women navigate challenging situations, make strategic decisions, set boundaries, and stay calm in the face of aggression. FSD is not just about physical defence but also about reclaiming personal power and confidence in spaces where women have previously felt vulnerable. Example: A woman facing persistent harassment on public transport learns through FSD how to assertively set verbal boundaries, position herself safely, and, if necessary, use simple physical techniques to deter an aggressor. ↩︎
