As we’re sure you’re all aware, 8 March is International Women’s Day! A day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, but equally a day to reflect on the long road that still lies ahead to achieve parity between genders. At EU level, legislation continues to be proposed and passed to advance the rights of women and girls. To the extent that EU funds are involved, we at the ECA scrutinised this policy to assess its effectiveness. Our findings were mixed.

There is undoubtedly progress and a lot of good will. On International Women’s Day two years ago, the European Commission proposed a directive on measures to end violence against women. Less than a month ago, the law was agreed between the European parliament and the Council. Though it is still awaiting final adoption, the final text will criminalise a range of offences such as female genital mutilation, cyber violence and forced marriage in countries that haven’t already done so.

However, our auditors have found that the reality sometimes falls short of the EU’s noble goals. In 2021, the ECA published a special report on gender mainstreaming (i.e. the active promotion of gender parity at every level of EU policy making and implementation). We found that the Commission hadn’t done nearly enough to implement gender mainstreaming in its budget and that gender impact analyses should be carried out for all EU funding and separate data collected systematically for each gender. “Gender equality is a fundamental EU value” affirms Eva Lindström, the ECA member who was responsible for the audit. “Our report was very important in pointing out that progress towards achieving this goal is much too slow. We note that the European Commission fully or partially accepted all our recommendations in 2021. However, gender equality is still at stake in Europe. Let’s stay vigilant”.

Last year, we also published a report on the “Spotlight Initiative”, a joint programme of the EU and UN to end violence against women and girls around the world. We found that while the scheme was a positive step, the proportion of funding reaching final beneficiaries was too low and that its duration was too short to create a lasting impact.

But how do we fare on gender equality here at the ECA? Well, it’s a familiar story. Overall, there has remained a consistent gender balance among our staff, with women currently holding a slight edge (53:47). Female representation in senior management has seen significant improvement between 2015 and the end of 2022, the proportion of female principal managers in the audit chambers more than quadrupled. However, women are still underrepresented in management positions (39% by the end of 2022) and overrepresented in lower grade positions, occupying more than 66% of secretarial and assistant jobs. Additionally, three new members recently appointed to the court were women, increasing female representation among members to 40% overall.