On the one hand the roadmap suggests taking the gender equality programme forwards. It pinpoints six priority action areas :
- equal economic independence for women and men;
- reconciling professional, family and private life;
- equal representation in decision making;
- eradicating all forms of violence and human trafficking based on gender;
- eliminating sexual stereotypes in society;
- promoting equality between sexes exterior to the EU.
To achieve these goals successfully the document plans for a revision of community legislation on gender equality, awareness raising about inequality between the sexes, acknowledging the specific nature of the sexes in all policies and providing better statistics.
In addition to this the European Commission supports the establishment of initiatives by funding programmes. Hence the EQUAL initiative funded projects via the structural funds until 2007 aiming to eliminate discrimination and inequality on the labour market; they also tried to foster the social insertion of women in difficulty.
At present the
PROGRESS programme which aims to support the implementation of the European Union's objectives in terms of employment and social affairs includes an area devoted to gender equality. PROGRESS has a total budget of 743.25 million euros over seven years (2007 - 2012), 12% of which is devoted to projects that focus on gender equality.
On the other hand the new European Institute for Gender Equality that was inaugurated on January 1st 2007 in Vilnius will be a vital tool to monitor the respect of the principle in all community action and amongst the member states.
The institute which is more technical in nature is there to guarantee the collation of reliable, comparable information across the community, to develop appropriate methodological tools notably for the integration of gender into community policies, to facilitate the exchange of good practice and dialogue between the players involved.
The European Union is undertaking one of the most advanced policies in the world in terms of gender equality. Not only is the Commission the initiator of community legislation to improve the situation in the Member States but it is also a model with regard to employment policy in its institutions. Even though the European policy is moving in the right direction achieving parity between men and women in Europe still has a long way to go.