To: Karen Vandekerckhove. Head of Unit, Gender Equality, European Commission
Copied to: Disability Unit, European Commission, Cabinet of Commissioner Lahbib, European Commission
Brussels, 17 January 2025
Ref. EDF-25-03-PM
Dear Ms Vandekerckhove,
I contact you on behalf of the European Disability Forum – umbrella organisation representing the rights of persons with disabilities in Europe, including over 60 million women with disabilities.
As the European Commission will be adopting a Roadmap on women’s rights in the next months, we wish to reiterate our call to ensure that women with disabilities are explicitly and ambitiously included in the roadmap.
It is particularly important that women with disabilities are actively included in all areas related to women’s rights and gender equality. Not only because they constitute an important part of the EU female population – the last EU data show that over 29% of the female population in the EU has a form of disability – but because the roadmap will truly advance women rights only if none is left behind.
We appreciated the increase in inclusion of women with disabilities during the last mandate, including in the Gender Equality Strategy. However, their visibility and inclusion remained mostly in area related to combating violence and ensuring victims’ rights.
It is now essential to also include women with disabilities in other areas, including leadership, work, care (as carer, not only care recipient). The EIGE Gender Equality Index reveals the many gaps that remain between women with and without disabilities, and women and men with disabilities. Our organisation and the disability movement are committed to work with you in bridging those gaps.
In order to help you shape the Roadmap, we share with you in annex, the third EDF’s manifesto on the rights of women and girls with disabilities, adopted in March 2024.
Our demands include:
- Meaningful inclusion and leadership in decision-making, including by enhancing accessibility measures for the participation of women and girls with disabilities in all issues.
- Increased visibility and awareness of and for women and girls with disabilities. The rights of women and girls with disabilities should be mainstreamed and visible in the work of the European Union and across Europe.
- Strong action to ban and end forced sterilisation of women with disabilities, and to ensure ambitious transposition and implementation of the Directive on combating violence against women, and of the Istanbul Convention
- Concrete targeted actions to reduce the poverty level faced by them, including through equal employment and pay measures, and ensuring the amount of disability allowances received by women and girls with disabilities are kept regardless of employment status or the financial means of their partners and families.
- Funding of organisations and projects that support the empowerment, leadership and improvement of rights of women and girls with disabilities.
We also reiterate our call to have experts on the rights of women with disabilities be included in the High-Level Group on gender mainstreaming of the European Commission, and EDF to become a member of the European Commission network for the Prevention of violence against women.
We remain at your disposal for any questions and further discussion and look forward to continuing working with you in this new mandate.
Yours sincerely,
Pirkko Mahlamäki
Chair of the Women’s Committee of the European Disability Forum