The EWL would welcome strong proposals to strengthening EU equality and anti-discrimination policies and wishes to stress the importance of further developing EU legislation in support of non-discrimination and equality on different grounds, especially those not covered by existing legislation, and improving existing legislation. EWL stresses the need to feel the existing gap in existing European legislation in relation to inequality and discrimination experienced by racial and religious minorities. The EWL would also favour an enlargement of the scope of EU equality and anti discrimination policies to cover additional grounds to the ones mentioned in Article 13, in particular social and economic status/origin.
The EWL considers gender inequality and sex-based discrimination to be present in all spheres of social life and to affect individuals and societies both in Europe and globally. Gender-based discrimination is about the structural unequal distribution of power and resources between women and men belonging to all groups in society and thus should be distinguished from discrimination on other bases such as ethnicity, disability and so on. Furthermore, women as a category can be distinguished from other major oppressed groups in that they represent a numerical majority and it is imperative that they are regarded as a basic unit of analysis of social life and experiences and in relation to all other forms of discrimination. At the same time, the EWL believes that EU policy and legislation can benefit from intersectional analysis and implementation, that is from the understanding that all forms of oppression do not act independently of, or in addition to one another but rather interrelate and apply in diverse ways to each woman and man.
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