In line with its commitment to achieve gender equality, the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed) has recently joined the #FEM_EU campaign which aims to push for a feminist agenda as top priority for the upcoming European Union’s elections. The campaign #FEM_EU was born in May 2018 and is the result of a collaborative action between the Aroa Foundation and the Eurolocal consultancy, an alliance between feminist and pro-European movements.

#FEM_EU encourages social actors around Europe to demand concrete working plans to achieve effective gender equality. It claims to focus on all aspects of gender inequalities, starting from gender pay gap, gender pension’s gap and ending sexual harassment and violence against women.

As part of #FEM_EU campaign, international conferences with local, national and European experts as well as debates in different municipalities are taking place with the support of a network of partners from Europe. As part of such programme the 29th of March 2019 the IEMed will participate in the round table "Political, social and economic impact for effective gender equality in the EU”, organised by Aroa Foundation in Barcelona (Spain) in which experts from the political, social, economic and media arena will exchange views in an enriching dialogue.

In the same line, other initiatives around Europe have been coordinated to ensure parity in democracy. Our network’s member, the French Coordination for the European Women’s Lobby (C.L.E.F.) in collaboration with Gender 5+ and the association Women for European citizenship have recently organized the colloquium “Your voice, your vote. All concerned by the challenges of Europe” in Paris (France) to stress the prominent role of women to combat populism and debate on which Europe do women want.

As encouraged by #FEM_EU campaign it is time for every citizen to put on purple glasses and ask for a more egalitarian Europe in which every citizen have the same rights regardless gender.