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About (English version):
With multiple crises impacting the global economy, more and more people are being pushed or pushed harder into poverty. According to the UN (2022), 1 COVID-19 caused the first increase in poverty rates in decades. Lockdowns introduced at different phases of the pandemic led to job losses and consequent losses of income, accommodation, and financial independence. It has been shown that groups at various intersections of inequality and particularly gender, class, age, and nationality were made even more vulnerable and pushed into deep poverty during the crisis.
Civil society organisations (CSOs), feminist organisations, and other initiatives played a key role in reaching out to the margins and supporting vulnerable groups who fell through the cracks of social protection schemes. Their creative strategies for fighting poverty along intersecting inequalities should be harnessed in the future to ensure a feminist and human rights approach.
The RESISTIRÉ project examines inequalities using a gender+ approach, which includes the application of a gender perspective in the quantitative and qualitative analyses of other socioeconomic differences. The European datasets that were used over the course of three research cycles of the project provided an opportunity to explore relevant indicators and the unequal experience of different groups during the pandemic. While our data analysis was able to identify and highlight some existing and worsening inequalities, it was often challenging to undertake an intersectional, gender+ approach because of a lack of more accurately representative European-level data.
Most of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) focused their attention on the economy and finance, support for business, the construction of infrastructures, and economic stabilisation. In most cases the design process of the plans was based on consultations with organisations involved in the production, labour, and economic sectors. Insufficient importance was assigned to engaging with actors representing the interests of vulnerable groups. As a result, even though the European Commission's guide on how to prepare the plans clearly stated the importance of recognising and addressing women and vulnerable groups, in conformity with the principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights, most of the NRRPs lack concrete measures targeting vulnerable groups and address different inequality grounds in cursory terms only. The failure to address gender+ vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in the policy design process means that there is a risk that the NRRPs will not only fail to achieve their set goals, but that their measures will further aggravate the situation of these groups.
The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) deems gender equality to be a crosscutting priority for the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). Despite this, no specific budget has been allocated to the issue of promoting gender equality, and the issue has not been included among the 11 criteria used by the Commission to assess the plans. RESISTIRÉ analysis of the NRRPs shows that the perspective of women is not sufficiently represented in the plans and very few measures have been taken to concretely address women’s specific needs or the problems they face. Given these shortcomings in the design of the NRRPs, it is imperative that the European Commission take special care to ensure that Monitoring and Evaluation pay special attention to those elements of the performance system that deal specifically with issues related to gender equality
