European Trade Union Committee for Education

Celebrating International Women’s Day ETUCE congratulates its member organisations for their hard work on promoting gender equality in education. This years’ theme of the International Women’s Day is ‘Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality’ and challenges governments to make national commitments that will close the gender equality gap by 2030.

Gender equality is a matter that concerns everybody and International Women’s Day is an annual opportunity for institutions and trade unions at international and European level to reflect on the steps that have been taken to achieve gender equality and to highlight actions that should be taken to accelerate gender parity.

All over Europe, teacher unions are contributing to support women who are struggling to achieve gender equality. There is no doubt that teacher unions and education systems have a significant impact on achieving gender equality. ETUCE and its member organisations are committed to gender equality and continue to combat gender stereotyping and inequalities both in the education sector and the labour market.

On the occasion of this year’s International Women’s Day, ETUCE is organising a training seminar in Malta from 9 to 11 March 2016, together with ETUI, on ‘Promoting Gender Equality through social dialogue in the teaching profession’. The aim of this seminar is to provide teacher unions with information on how to promote gender equality in the teaching profession through social dialogue and collective bargaining.

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), has launched a dissemination-campaign that addresses gender segregation in the labour market and aims to ‘break the glass walls’. In accordance with this theme, this year’s ETUC’s annual 8th March Survey focuses on horizontal as well as vertical segregation in different occupations. ETUCE and its member organisations have actively contributed to this survey.

Calling on gender equality as one of the key principles of the EU since the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality of the European Parliament organised an inter-parliamentary committee meeting on 3 March 2016 addressing the issue of women refugees and asylum seekers in the EU.

Further events at international level regard the eAtlas of Gender Inequality in Education launched by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. This eAtlas presents the latest available data of educational pathways of girls and boys from more than 200 countries and territories for all levels of education and can be used for maps, charts and ranking tables on gender gaps in education.

Moreover, this year’s United Nations Commission on the Status of Women focuses on the empowerment of women and the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls. Representatives of Member States, UN entities, and ECOSOC-accredited non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from around the world, among them numerous delegates from EI/ETUCE member organisations, are invited to attend the 60th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women on 14-24 March 2016.

Read Education International's article on the International Women's Day