The EU’s recently released new Gender Equality Strategy (2026–2030) arrives at a critical juncture. An escalating backlash against the core values of equality is currently challenging Europe’s progress toward its most urgent priorities: building sustained democratic resilience, ensuring institutional preparedness, and boosting both competitiveness and security. While this new strategy can serve as a springboard for safeguarding achievements, it will fail to drive a notable leap forward unless its implementation—and systematic mainstreaming—is grounded in the understanding that gender equality is a fundamental prerequisite for reaching the Union’s broader strategic goals.
To deliver meaningful impact, any actions derived from the presented strategy must be further adjusted to four key pillars that are not currently clearly highlighted. Firstly, prevention and protection in practice will require the Union to adapt more swiftly to the complex interlinks between internal challenges, shifting narratives, and external pressures. Secondly, meaningful involvement of the private sector, smaller overlooked actors, and civil society across all Member States is essential for achieving both sizable impact and widespread buy-in. Thirdly, engaging candidate countries in the drafting of practical steps and legislative tools—while demanding full commitment to specific actions—will create a mutually beneficial mechanism for the EU and for the accession ambitions of its partners. Finally, delivering on this level of ambition will require substantial and predictable funding that truly reflects the fundamental role of gender equality in securing Europe’s strategic future.
Gender-based cyberviolence
The Commission intends to build upon existing legislation, notably the Directive on Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (VAW Directive) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). These will serve as the foundation for monitoring efforts, developing guidelines, and facilitating a structured regulatory dialogue with Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) to collect a critical mass of data.
While current frameworks address certain forms of cyberviolence, our recent research highlights how the growing sophistication of AI has amplified cybersecurity threats. This includes the proliferation of AI-generated deepfakes, image-based sexual abuse (often termed ‘revenge pornography’), and digital surveillance. Emerging technologies now facilitate subtle, frequently undetectable forms of abuse, ranging from tracking via wearables and the manipulation of smart home systems to the deployment of stalkerware and spyware, identity theft, and unauthorised access to personal accounts.
Successful implementation and impactful monitoring will rely on establishing minimal mandatory benchmarks to harmonise currently fragmented laws, procedures, and definitions. While we welcome the development of guidelines for law enforcement and prosecutorial authorities—addressing the current lack of clarity in criminal procedure and victim support—this alone is insufficient. Given that new forms of gender-based cyberviolence evolve rapidly, shorter cycles for issuing updated guidelines and continuous mapping of the environment will be essential to ensure existing mechanisms remain adaptive. Speed and alignment are paramount.
Furthermore, structured dialogues with large platforms must be expanded to include a broader range of tech actors, particularly to address AI’s societal impact. Currently, alignment between rapid AI development and its governance remains weak; policymakers and developers often operate at vastly different speeds with mismatched levels of technical or policy understanding. These gaps directly hinder the fight against cyberviolence. Consequently, the Commission should consider linking these efforts to the AI Act, mandating gender benchmarks as minimal standards. These should be integrated into both the pre-release and post-release evaluation cycles of AI models to mitigate risks to safety, equality, and fairness. Therefore, pre-empting gender-based cyberviolence incidents.
Equal employment opportunities and adequate working conditions
As with cyberviolence, the increased proliferation of AI has introduced new risks for women in the workplace. In its latest Gender Equality Strategy, the Commission has already linked the AI Act and the Quality Jobs Act as regulatory tools to prevent bias in recruitment, evaluation, and management. We agree with the urgency of mitigating these risks. Our research indicates that only 34% of AI leaders identify equity and fairness as AI-related risks, while a mere 26% report that their employers are actively mitigating them. Mandating gender audits for AI systems used in HR or implementing stricter certification rules could prove essential in balancing technological progress with the guarantee of equal employment opportunities and fair working conditions.
As Europe faces an acute need to bolster its defence and space sectors, the inclusion of women relates directly to the Union’s strategic priorities. In our recent report, we reviewed the role and impact of women in defence and security across Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. Our findings highlighted that while women’s participation in the armed and police forces in these Eastern Flank countries is above average, true gender equality remains elusive due to persistent structural and societal barriers. Nevertheless, as the defence sector shifts toward new technologies and changing paradigms, a window of opportunity exists to open these traditional systems to women in emerging, high-tech roles.
However, a lack of granular data and a general reluctance to share information within the sector due to potential data sensitivity continue to hamper effective risk mitigation and the dismantling of barriers. In this regard, the Commission’s planned survey of the defence and space sectors is a vital step forward.
Similarly, unleashing the potential of women in research, innovation, and startups is inseparably linked to Europe’s competitiveness. The forthcoming Action Plan on Women in Research, Innovation & Startups must contain practical, high-impact actions. As we have proposed in our previous work on women in innovation and women in the digital space, these should include from fostering formal and informal digital education at every life stage, alongside entrepreneurship and financial literacy to creating funding opportunities for startups tied to gender equality milestones (e.g., gender plans and balance policies), increasing investment transparency to expose and close gender funding gaps, and amplifying the role of ‘ambassadors’ to provide visible role models for the next generation of innovators.
Safety in public and political life
As highlighted in both the newest Gender Equality Strategy and the European Democracy Shield, women in media and politics are targeted with greater frequency and intensity, both offline and online. Online pressure is twofold: it manifests through targeted cyberviolence and via coordinated information campaigns. With the forthcoming Recommendations on Safety in Politics and additional protection guidelines for journalists, the proposed measures must be both ambitious and practical.
While initiatives such as ‘coaching, mentoring and networking for women politicians, training for political leaders, and awareness-raising actions’ have a potential to bolster knowledge and resilience, they are not a substitute for structural reform. Regulatory frameworks should incorporate specific language identifying women in politics and media as high-risk targets. This should serve as a catalyst for a debate on whether harassment against these groups warrants criminalisation on a separate scale, while remaining mindful of the limits of EU competencies. In the interim, the potential within current regulations to mandate compliance and enforce preventative and protective actions should be fully explored.
To mitigate the current lack of direct regulatory power, a more institutionalised approach to involving civil society, local and regional authorities, and private sector stakeholders is essential. This multi-stakeholder engagement offers a vital avenue for driving impact from the ground up—for instance, through proposed initiatives engaging men and boys—while simultaneously providing the practical insights necessary to draft more robust and effective policies.
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