On Tuesday, 8th March from 13:00-14:00 CET, the European Movement International held an online panel organized on the occasion of International Women’s Day, entitled “Women’s Participation in European Democratic Life”.

Although gender equality is vocalised as a priority for the European Commission and the French Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2022, we can still witness a gender gap in the participation of women in the public debate and democratic initiatives. While the past few months have shown that women’s rights can be endangered in Member States and that they need to be continuously safeguarded, there is a need to foster spaces of discussion and debate among women in Europe and to ensure fairer decision-making processes for an effective democracy. 

This event was a great opportunity to gather a panel of high-level women speakers from Civil society organizations to share their expertise and agenda on how to build an inclusive European governance, and reaffirm the importance of equal participation of women and men in citizens initiatives, in advocacy and in political arenas.

Our panel included:

• Anke Stock, Senior Gender Expert and Programs Coordinator at Women Engage for a Common Future
• Heather Grabbe, Director of the Open Society European Policy Institute
• Patrizia Heidegger, Director for Global Policies and Sustainability at European Environmental Bureau
• Jéromine Andolfatto, Policy and Campaigns Officer at the European Women’s Lobby

Moderated by Maja Bobić, Head of Projects & Fundraising at the European Movement International.

We encourage participants to join the discussions on Twitter using the handle @EMInternational.

The livestream is available here: