By Maria Nikolopoulou

A few days before we mark International Women’s Day and as we anticipate the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW69) in New York, this is a good time to reflect on and evaluate achievements in gender equality. It is also the right time to look towards the future and continue paving the way forward.

In terms of the legislative framework, we note improvements: more women are active in the labour market, earning better incomes, attaining higher levels of education, increasing their political representation, and holding more positions of power. However, progress has been slow and uneven across the Member States.

But as long as structural inequalities, gender stereotypes and backlashes against women’s rights persist, women will continue to be under-represented in the public sphere, in politics and in STEM education, they will be exposed to online and offline violence and they will lack access to resources and capital for entrepreneurship. They will also be more prone to suffering time and money poverty and the pay and retirement gaps will take too many years to close.

Moving forward is all about training, funding, and commitment. We need resources to boost women’s skills for the digital and green just transition, to fund national action plans to combat violence against women, and to provide training for all personnel working with survivors of violence.

We need to finance entrepreneurial projects and establish affordable, accessible, and high-quality child and elderly care services to lift the burden of unpaid care-giving responsibilities from women's shoulders. Additionally, we need a strong commitment to creating safe spaces, involving more women in local, national, and EU parliaments, and ensuring their active participation in non-violent conflict resolution and peace-building processes, while also promoting gender-inclusive approaches within these efforts.

On top of that, having a broad European strategy for Agenda 2030 would help us move much faster in making gender equality a key part of our policies. The Sustainable Development Goals should be tackled as a whole, not one by one.

In the EU, progress is 'good'. But 'good' is not good enough for the men, women and girls in the EU that are fighting for effective gender equality for the years to come. Our role as civil society is to step up the pressure on policy-makers to move things forward fast.