European Institute for Gender Equality

The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) is a European Union agency established in 2007. The agency supports the Member States' governments and the EU's own institutions (especially the European Commission) in their efforts to promote equality between women and men.

EIGE's premise is that gender equality is not only a fundamental right in itself, but also a means of achieving economic growth and social cohesion.

According to EIGE, the EU has already strengthened legislation on and the integration of gender equality in many policy areas, but more remains to be done. Accordingly, EIGE's objective is:

To gather and analyse comparable data on gender issues
To develop methodological resources for facilitating gender mainstreaming in all policy areas
To facilitate sharing of best practice and dialogue among partners
To raise public awareness of gender equality

The European Commission has produced a strategy for promoting equality between women and men. One key goal is to make it easier for women to realise their potential and thereby contribute to achieving the EU's overarching social and economic objectives.

To achieve the objectives, the gender equality strategy sets out a number of actions:

To get more women onto the labour market and contributing to reaching the Europe 2020 Targets of a 75 per cent employment rate for both women and men
To implement targeted initiatives to get more women into executive positions in financial decision-making
To promote female entrepreneurship and self-employment
To institute an annual European-wide "Equal Pay Day" to raise awareness of the fact that women earn 18 per cent less on average than men throughout the EU
To cooperate with all the Member States on ending violence against women, especially the abolition of female genital mutilation within and outside Europe.

The European Commission will also be establishing an annual Gender Equality Dialogue which will involve the European Parliament, the Presidencies of the Council of Europe, the European social partners and civil society in assessing the progress of the strategy.