The new EU Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2030: empty promises leaving the most marginalised at the margins
Brussels, Belgium – 6 March 2026
The European Commission adopted its Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2030 on 5 March 2026, ahead of International Women’s Day. ENAR recognises commitments that set a necessary floor: opposing backtracking on rights in a polarised Europe, strengthening action on gender-based violence (GBV) with focus on cyberviolence and deepfakes, and advancing global sexual and reproductive health rights.
Equality strategies are only as strong as who they centre. However, this one largely fails that test. The binary framing – women and girls versus men and boys – runs intact through every pillar, structurally erasing trans, non-binary, and gender-diverse people from employment, violence prevention, healthcare, and access to justice. Intersectionality remains rhetorical, not operational: no mandates for data disaggregation by race, ethnicity, or migration status leave racialised, migrant, undocumented, and sex-working communities invisible. No mention of migrant care workers despite 95% of EU domestic workers being women, and in countries like Italy, over 80% of registered domestic workers being migrants.
GBV is framed too narrowly as interpersonal harm, ignoring structural drivers embedded in state systems: policing, borders, healthcare, austerity. Femonationalism weaponises feminist gains against racialised communities; sex workers’ criminalisation and racialised trans vulnerabilities go unnamed. Care policies sideline migrant majorities’ legal barriers, extending privilege rather than funding evidence or grassroots repair from the margins.
Our contributions to the Gender Equality and LGBTIQ+ consultations demanded intersectionality as concrete method – redesigning power from those long rendered expendable. The Strategy opts for symbolic inclusion over structural transformation. We will track implementation to expose gaps and demand racial justice: gender equality without anti-racism is incomplete.
A Gender Equality Strategy that does not name structural racism is not a neutral omission. It is a political choice — one that will reproduce the same exclusions this strategy claims to address.
