Gender Equality as a European Policy Priority

Gender stereotypes and unconscious biases influence expectations and academic trajectories from an early age. These mechanisms discourage girls from perceiving scientific fields particularly mathematics and engineering as domains “made for them.”  As a result, even when gender-based performance gaps are partially narrow during secondary education, students’ orientation and specialization choices remain deeply unequal. Moreover, women’s participation in education and social life does not necessarily translate into equal employment opportunities or professional parity with men.

According to the latest Eurostat data (2021) on tertiary graduates (indicator tps00217), only about 33 % of all STEM graduates in the EU are women, despite women being the majority of higher-education students overall. Also doctoral education remains male-dominated. Although women outnumber men in most university programmes, they remain underrepresented at the doctoral level, a stage often treated as the benchmark of academic excellence. This pattern reflects social structures that continue to reward male trajectories, helping explain why women make up less than one third of researchers and only a quarter of engineers today.

When examining the highest-paying professions, it becomes clear that these careers are predominantly rooted in technical disciplines such as engineering, technology, and the natural sciences, rather than in the social sciences. The continued dominance of men in high-paying scientific and technical fields contributes to women’s economic vulnerability and gives rise to what is known as gender-based employment segregation. While women’s participation in social and economic life has increased significantly, an essential question remains: in what types of jobs are women employed? At the global level, women are disproportionately concentrated in low-productivity and low-return sectors, particularly within the service economy, including retail, education, health, and social services. 

As gender gaps in education narrow, or even reverse, the continued concentration of women in low-productivity jobs reflects a growing misallocation of human capital. Moreover, employment segregation plays a major role in sustaining gender wage gaps and restricting women’s access to higher-quality employment opportunities,career advancement, and reduces women’s access to leadership roles. At the household level, it affects income distribution, welfare, and intergenerational outcomes, as women increasingly act as primary or co-breadwinners.

EU initiatives for women empowerment

    The European Union’s Gender Equality Strategy (GES) for the period 2020–2025 reaches the end. This development signals a new phase in how the EU addresses gender equality, as the European Commission prepares to develop and adopt a new Gender Equality Strategy for the 2026–2030 period. While continuing earlier commitments, the new strategy also offers a chance to engage with emerging challenges that were only partially addressed in the past.

The 2020–2025 GES set important groundwork, addressing gender-based violence, pay inequality, work–life balance, and women’s participation in decision-making. However, ongoing changes in society, technology, the economy and the environment have shown that have made it clear that the next policy cycle must look further ahead and work in a more integrated way.

One key area of focus is likely to be digital transformation and artificial intelligence, as it is becoming clear that these technologies can deepen existing gender inequalities. Issues such as algorithmic bias, online misogyny, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and the gender digital divide have become increasingly visible as digital tools are used in areas like employment, education, and social media. In response, the strategy is expected to weave gender equality more directly into EU digital governance, especially through the implementation of the AI Act and the Digital Services Act.

Another major area of expansion concerns climate action and the green transition. The 2026–2030 GES is expected to place a stronger focus on gender-responsive climate and environmental policies. It also involves closing gender gaps in climate financing, strengthening women’s voices in climate decision-making, and ensuring that the green and energy transitions are socially fair and inclusive. The alignment of gender equality objectives with the European Green Deal, the Clean Industrial Deal, and international climate commitments shows the growing recognition that climate resilience and sustainability cannot be achieved without gender equality.

Understanding Gender Inequality as Power 

From the perspective of feminist theory and critical social thought, thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Simone de Beauvoir show that gender inequality is more than an injustice faced by women; it is a key mechanism through which power operates and maintains. For French philosopher Foucault, power operates through everyday norms, institutions, and forms of knowledge that discipline bodies and regulate social roles. Gender hierarchies are thus embedded in these power relations, shaping what is considered normal, legitimate, or possible. Similarly, Simone de Beauvoir showed that women are historically constructed as the “Other,” a position that naturalizes inequality and renders domination invisible. In this view, gender inequality supports broader systems of domination by separating people into unequal positions and making differences in power and resources seem natural. As long as such inequalities persist, they continue to sustain mechanisms of control and exploitation, reinforcing social hierarchies well beyond gender itself. Addressing gender inequality is therefore not only a matter of justice for women, but a necessary step toward challenging the broader structures of power that govern societies and individuals.