The first biennial report on the implementation of the Council of Europe Gender Equality Strategy 2024–2029 highlights substantial activity and strong institutional engagement across member States in 2024–2025.
Progress is particularly significant in relation to preventing and combating gender stereotypes and sexism, and preventing and combating violence against women and girls. However, outcomes remain uneven across the Strategy’s six objectives: women’s representation in leadership often remains well below the 40% minimum threshold for balanced representation, and attrition in justice systems, particularly in sexual violence cases, remains high.
The report therefore points to a need to improve the visibility and use of the Council of Europe’s tools in these areas. Looking to the future, the report also points to the two new Council of Europe recommendations - on equality and artificial intelligence, and on accountability for technology-facilitated violence against women and girls - which provide member States with important policy frameworks to address algorithmic gender biases and harmful online content by strengthening legal, institutional and regulatory measures. Further, the GEC’s new publication, Advancing Gender Equality through values-based communication: a practical guide to deflect anti-gender rhetoric, which can be accompanied by training on request, can be used by a range of communicators, including national authorities and civil society, to develop more effective communication with a view to making gender equality policies more resilient.
