Women’s Rights and Gender Equality

Eliminating gender-based discrimination

The committee is responsible for defining, promoting and protecting women's rights in and beyond Europe, and for an equal opportunities policy. This includes fighting for equality between men and women in the labour market and how they are treated at work by striking a balance between professional work and family time and bringing in flexible working arrangements that include different types of leave or access to care facilities.

It also deals with the horizontal implementation of the principle of gender equality across all EU policy sectors, creating equal opportunities in education, enhancing women’s potential in rural areas, boosting ICT and digitalisation, stimulating women’s entrepreneurship and addressing women’s well-being and health.

The EPP Group’s general concerns are around the pay gap, women's economic independence, female poverty, women's underrepresentation in decision-making, and trafficking and violence against women and girls. We stand for complete equality between men and women in terms of wages and pensions, as well as career evolution, in every Member State.

The EPP Group is calling for targeted measures aimed at increasing women’s employment rates to combat the persisting 11.5% employment gender gap and to utilise the full potential of women’s labour market competencies and skills. We have also put our efforts behind combating all forms of violence against women and girls to ensure that victims are protected and perpetrators are punished.