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The EWL believes that it is of utmost importance that the
strong expertise that migrant women’s organisations and organisations that have
been supporting migrant women have developed over the years is used by
decision-makers at local, regional, national and European level and that
specific funding lines are made available.
European Women's Lobby - EWL
Incorporating Gender in
Integration Policies: the Way Forward
We are at a crucial time in
defining the way ahead to effectively incorporate a gender perspective in
integration policies. For many years, academics and feminist activists have
talked about the invisibility of migrant women in the academic and political
sphere and about the need to make migrant women visible. We can say we won this
battle together: this can be seen both in the academic sphere where since the
80s, numerous books and articles have been published on migrant women’s
specific situation and even mainstream academics are talking about migrant
women nowadays, but migrant women have also become more visible in the
political sphere. At the European level, we have seen an increased attention to
the need to incorporate gender issues in integration policies (e.g. European Parliament resolution on women’s immigration); Resolution
1478 (2006) and Recommendation
1732 (2006) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; Declaration of
the 3rd Ministerial Conference on Integration of 3-4 November 2008).
The European Women’s Lobby
believes it is important for women’s associations and migrant women’s
organisations to build on this political momentum and to be proactive. The EWL regrets that most national
integration policies have been characterised by an overwhelmingly negative
dialogue portraying migrants a “burden” to our societies that had led to the
stereotyping and stigmatisation of migrants while not acknowledging the
economic, social and cultural contribution that migrant women and men are
bringing to European societies.
The EWL believes that it is of
utmost importance that the strong expertise that migrant women’s organisations
and organisations that have been supporting migrant women have developed over
the years is used by decision-makers at local, regional, national and European
level and that specific funding lines are made available. That is why the EWL
has been running since
2006 a project called “Equal rights. Equal Voices. Migrant Women in the
European Union”, that aims at making migrant women’s organisations heard at the
European level. In this
context, the EWL organised in partnership with migrant women’s organizations
from across Europe a seminar on gender and integration policies on December 1st
in Brussels (see the programme here). More than 20 representatives of migrant women’s
organisations from across Europe had met the week-end before to discuss the setting
up of a European network of migrant women and common actions they would like to
undertake together in 2009. A follow-up meeting will take place in January
2009.
The EWL thanks the funders of
this project without whom these activities would not have been possible: EPIM,
the Barrow Cadbury Trust and the Sigrid Rausing Trust.
For more information about the
project, click here.
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