Mar 06, 2025 Equal

On 8 March 2025, International Women’s Day, FERPA marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a visionary plan to achieve gender equality and the rights of women and girls everywhere. This anniversary comes at a time of increasing global crises, including the repression of human rights, economic instability, climate emergencies, democratic erosion, demographic transition and declining equality between women and men.

These crises are marked by inequalities and effects specific to age and gender.

FERPA denounces the invisibility of older women despite the feminisation of old age and the fact that, from the point of view of the European Union’s equality policies, there are no measures aimed specifically for older women. This fact is even more serious when we consider the demographic changes of recent decades, in which women’s life expectancy has increased considerably and is now significantly higher than that of men. In the 65-69 age group, women are already in the majority, and the older we get, the more this phenomenon of the “feminisation of old age” increases.

FERPA strongly protests and condemns the recent action of the European Commission to withdraw, after 17 years of negotiations, the proposal for a horizontal directive on equal treatment, which aimed to extend anti-discrimination protections beyond employment to cover age, disability, sexual orientation and religion/belief.

This decision comes on top of other measures in the field of equality, resulting in a step backwards in the European Commission’s commitment in this area. FERPA expresses its concern and undertakes to put in place all possible initiatives to strengthen the protection of equality between women and men throughout life.