Knowledge and mutual learning

Emerging global and national data show increases in gender-based violence and increases in the reported number of cases of gender-based violence against women and LGBTQI persons during the COVID-19 pandemic. The failure to finalise the adoption of the Istanbul Convention at the EU level is a contributing factor to increasing the conditions for and occurrences of gender-based violence during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 crisis has reinforced many pre-existing inequalities, and simultaneously made them more visible. The lockdowns brought with them the closure of many care facilities and the requirement to stay at home, which strongly impacted people with caring responsibilities, whether it be for children, elderly people, people with a disability, and/or others. But the situation impacted men and women in different ways, as the gender care gap was exacerbated, and women took up more care work. The gender pay gap likely contributed to this trend: because women tend to earn lower wages and work in part-time jobs more often, they were the most likely to have to give up their paid work within a couple in order to sustain the increased caring duties of a household.

Although gender mainstreaming has been adopted as an approach in EU policymaking for over two decades, national-level policies are largely still not mainstreamed. Gender mainstreaming should not only be an ambition, it should also be implemented, monitored, and evaluated, with concrete results and impact. In particular, policies should not only focus on so-called “traditional” or “typical” family models, citizenship criteria, and standard employment contracts, as this focus results in the exclusion of large segments of European societies (e.g., LGBTQI+ people, the unemployed, migrants etc.).