From Strategy to Roadmap: How the EU’s Gender Agenda is Being Redefined

On 7th March 2025, the European Commission published the Roadmap for Women’s Rights as a bridge between the Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025 which is coming to the end of its mandate, and its new Strategy that will be developed after Spring 2025. The Commission describes it as a Declaration that “reiterates, reaffirms and reinforces the Commission’s commitment to women’s rights”. While continuing to address some of the thematic areas contained in the Gender Equality Strategy, the Roadmap signals a subtle yet significant shift in tone and priorities, one that aligns more closely with the political direction of a right-leaning European Commission. This article reviews the Roadmap.

The Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025 outlined comprehensive measures to end gender-based violence, ensure equal pay, improve work-life balance, and boost the representation of women in leadership roles. It also included a section on its external policy through the Gender Action Plan and institutional mechanisms. An explicit focus of the Strategy was its emphasis on intersectionality, acknowledging that women do not form a homogenous group and that factors such as race, disability, sexual orientation, and migration status affect the degree and nature of discrimination individuals face. This approach enables a more inclusive and far-reaching policy framework. In the current Roadmap, it is still mentioned in the preamble, but in the principles, the approach is not further integrated.

In contrast, the Roadmap for Women’s Rights, while maintaining a formal commitment to gender equality, marks a shift towards more cautious and conservative language. Security, protection, and safeguarding European values are recurrent themes, and the approach to gender-based violence is framed more in terms of law and order than structural social change. The document pays particular attention to the need to protect women and girls from “hybrid threats and security concerns”, a formulation that, intentionally or not, echoes nationalist rhetoric gaining traction in several Member States. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the document adopts the term gender equality but mainly with the connotation of women’s rights and equality between women and men, thus avoiding any reference to LGBTQI+ or anything beyond the binary category of men and women.

Moreover, in the introduction, the Commission stresses its ambition to achieve gender equality and the need to respect the national competencies of the Member States. Such a concept is further reiterated throughout the Declaration for the areas, such as education and health, that are under the competence of the single states. However, in some cases this approach can leave existing violations of women’s rights unaddressed. For instance, the Commission commits to just “support” and “complement” Member States’ policies on women’s access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, but in some countries the right to abortion is extremely difficult to access, to the point that almost 5,000 women have to travel abroad to get one. Hence, this stance may not be linked merely to how the EU works in terms of division of competencies, rather it may also reflect the growing resistance in some EU circles—especially among conservative and far-right factions—to policies perceived as promoting progressive gender ideologies.

The shift in tone and focus is not surprising when viewed in the broader political context. Since 2024, the European political landscape has tilted to the right, with rising support for nationalist and traditionalist parties in multiple States. The elections for the European Parliament did not lead to a big victory for the far right, mostly it solidified the power of the biggest political group: EPP (Christian Democrats, centre conservatism, etc.). This shift has been mirrored in the composition and rhetoric of the Commission itself. The appointment of hardline figures to key portfolios (including equality and migration) has drawn criticism from civil society and human rights groups. Echoing concerns from European feminist groups, a 2024 report by The Guardian noted concerns that the Commission was “downgrading” equality as a policy priority by merging it with the portfolio for crisis management, while also empowering figures with records of opposing progressive gender and LGBTQ+ rights.

Political Groupings, such as the Left, in the European Parliament have condemned what they view as a “mainstreaming of the far right” within the EU’s institutional core, warning that this could weaken the protection of fundamental rights, including those of women, migrants, and minorities. The Roadmap, in this light, appears to embody a compromise between maintaining the EU’s legal obligations toward gender equality and accommodating more conservative political forces.

Despite these shifts, it would be inaccurate to claim that the EU has abandoned its gender equality agenda or has accepted a rollback on its current legislation. The Roadmap outlines tangible commitments to reduce violence, close gender pay gaps, and support women’s leadership. Yet, the framing and priorities suggest that gender equality is no longer viewed as a transformative social project, but instead as a matter of targeted interventions within “acceptable” political boundaries.

In conclusion, the evolution from the Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025 to the 2025 Roadmap for Women’s Rights illustrates the impact of political change on EU policymaking. While both documents share the same goals, the latter reflects a more conservative, securitized, and national narrative of gender equality, one that risks narrowing the scope of what equality means and who it includes. As the EU moves forward, the challenge will be to defend the gains made while resisting the dilution of rights under the guise of neutrality or “European values”.

This analysis is written by Erika Piazza, with some feedback from Gea Meijers. Erika Piazza is a second-year master’s student in Human Rights and Multi-Level Governance at the University of Padua, Italy, with an interest in analysis human trafficking.