The European Union will soon publish its new Gender Equality Strategy for the coming 4 years. It is said that will address intersectional discrimination and gender stereotypes. As a European feminist network that reaches to approximately 300 associations through its membership with a strong membership (and partnership) of migrant feminist groups and associations, WIDE+ has stresssed the urgent need for political action to address the multiple discriminations faced by migrant women, which includes refugee, trafficked, undocumented and other women and girls that have arrived in the EU at some point.
Download or read the recommendations in full: statementmigration_GESEU2020
While WIDE+ is agreeing with the position of CONCORD in terms of the relationships between the external and domestic policies of the EU, in terms of the domestic policies the new Gender Equality Strategy (GES) should:
- Encourage member states to address multiple discriminations migrant women face in accessing women’s rights most urgently in the domain of healthcare, political and civic participation, labour, and justice. A major problem migrant women face is the discriminations in terms of addressing violence against them.
- The GES must make more budget available to support member states to systematically include an intersectional dimension in all of their gender equality strategies, and to systematically include a gender and antiracist perspectives in all the programmes of the EU and member states to receive and integrate migrants.
- The GES should encourage the EU and member states to provide more direct funds to the work done by migrant women and girls in supporting their communities and other migrants. Another common discovery is that governments often contribute minimally to the services and actions provided by self-organized migrant women and girls. This needs to change.
- The GES should include empowering migrant women as a policy objective that should be backed by a communication prepared by the European Commission.
- Migrant women face racism in their treatment by institutions, such as immigration offices or social workers, but also when they work or want to access work. Strict measures and penalties should be taken on racial profiling; the deconstructing and addressing institutional and structural racism is our final recommendation.
This list of recommendations was prepared and undersigned by:
WIDE+ and its Working Group on migration: Atina, Mujeres Con Voz, Network of Latin American and Caribbean Women, Kulu Denmark and GADIP in Sweden.
World March of Women of Belgium
Picture from the Greens Europe as illustration