2020 sees the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. This important milestone provides an opportunity to discuss the achievements and future challenges for the advancement of girls' and women's rights and gender equality. Therefore, the European Parliament, at the initiative of the Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee, decided to hold for the first time a European Gender Equality Week from Monday 26 to Thursday 29 October.

To mark the occasion, all EP Committees have been invited to either hold a debate, a presentation, an exchange of views, or a hearing on topics related to gender equality, and many of them replied favourably. To name just a few, the Civil Liberties Committee will hold a hearing on human trafficking on Monday evening, the new special Committee on Beating Cancer will hold a public hearing on ‘‘Beating breast cancer: challenges and opportunities’’ on Tuesday afternoon, and the sub-committee on Human Rights will organise an exchange of views with prominent women activists on Wednesday morning.

The Women’s Rights Committee, associated with many of these events, will also hold its own event on Thursday at which the Director of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), Carlien Scheele, will present the findings of the Gender Equality Index 2020, with a special focus on digitalisation in the world of work and its consequences for gender equality.

Some other Committees that were unable to participate this time have committed to look into gender mainstreaming aspects in their fields of competences later this year.

For the full programme of events in all participating Committees, click here.

You can watch all these events via webstreaming on the EP Multimedia Centre.

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Ahead of the first Gender Equality Week, Women’s Rights Committee Chair Evelyn Regner (S&D, AT) said: "I am glad that so many bodies of the European Parliament responded to our invitation and join us to celebrate the first European Gender Equality Week. I believe it will bring fresh perspectives to our long battle for women’s empowerment and gender equality. This has become even more important now with the outbreak and foreseeable aftermath of COVID-19. Since the outbreak, we are witnessing a range of devastating effects on women and, more generally, on gender equality. It is high time that we give gender mainstreaming more visibility and recognition in all policy areas in order to ensure that the 21st century indeed becomes that of women."