Gender equality mainstreaming

In response to persistent gender gaps and intersecting inequalities, the EU has intensified efforts to make its budget and policymaking more inclusive. Challenges such as the cost-of-living crisis, care burden disparities and unequal access to digital and green jobs have highlighted the need for sustained investment in gender equality.

As a result, gender mainstreaming is now embedded across major EU policies and funding programmes, including the European Social Fund Plus, the European Regional Development Fund, the Just Transition Fund, Horizon Europe and the common agricultural policy, NDICI-Global Europe. These tools promote equal access to resources, economic participation and social protection – particularly for women and underrepresented groups.

Looking ahead, President von der Leyen announced a new gender equality strategy beyond 2025 as part of her 2024 political guidelines for the 2024-2029 Commission. This upcoming strategy will build on the progress achieved so far and address emerging challenges, ensuring that equality remains a driving force in the EU’s future policy and budgetary decisions.

Achievements

The citizens, equality, rights and values programme supported gender equality by funding Member States in transposing the Pay Transparency Directive, strengthening organisations fighting gender-based violence through long-term projects and providing financial support to local grassroots groups via intermediaries. In 2024 around 25% of the programme’s committed funds focused primarily on promoting gender equality.
Under Horizon Europe, the ‘Realising girls’ and women’s inclusion, representation and empowerment’ project aims to prevent and reverse gender inequalities across the political, social, economic and cultural spheres by identifying and dismantling the root causes of gender discrimination through a multidisciplinary approach. It involves collaboration across several European countries and South Africa, focusing on institutional, experiential and symbolic dimensions to promote transformative equality.
With EUR 3.9 million in funding, the European Social Fund Plus supports a project involving organisations from Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Portugal and Romania, which promotes a holistic and intersectional approach to combating homelessness among women. The project’s objectives include empowering marginalised women to overcome homelessness by providing access to tailored treatment pathways, integrating gender-specific approaches in trauma-informed care and influencing policy changes towards gender-sensitive and inclusive strategies.
Thanks to the Recovery and Resilience Facility, by the end of 2024, Estonia rolled out a digital gender-pay-gap tool for employers to provide the necessary information about the gender pay gap, its possible causes and solutions to address it.In addition, Italy provided financial support to the creation and/or growth of 700 enterprises led by women, supporting female entrepreneurship and strengthening women’s participation in business activities.This crucial investment is complemented by structural reforms, including reforms to combat gender inequalities in Portugal, to better regulate the profession of nursing assistants in Sweden and to improve prenatal and neonatal health screening in Bulgaria.
Under the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance, the Commission has supported the empowerment of women with minority backgrounds. Specific projects such as ‘Romani women power of change in the Western Balkans and Türkiye’ (with an EU contribution of EUR 1 million) and ‘EU regional action for Roma education: increased education support and opportunities for Roma students in the Western Balkans and Türkiye’ (EUR 4 million) aimed to increase the participation of Roma women in local decision-making and education.
Under the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument  – Global Europe, the Commission funded gender responsive investments under the Global Gateway strategy, such as the Africa Connected programme implemented by FINNFUND and targeted actions to support womens’ rights, such as the WYDE and ACT Programmes with the UN Women project ‘Promoting the Agenda on Women, Peace and Security with Military Actors’ in the Central African Republic and Mozambique. The project works to enhance women’s inclusion and integration among military actors, and to ensure that armed forces are better prepared to integrate a gender perspective in the planning and conduct of operations and activities.

How much do we spend?

In line with the 2020-2025 gender equality strategy, the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework and NextGenerationEU support a range of initiatives promoting women’s labour market participation, work–life balance, care infrastructure, female entrepreneurship and gender balance in education and professions. Dedicated funding also supports civil-society and public institutions tackling gender-based violence.

The Commission developed a methodology to track gender-related spending at the programme level, in collaboration with the European Institute for Gender Equality and informed by the European Court of Auditors’ 2021 report on gender mainstreaming in the EU budget.

Since the 2023 financial year, the monitoring of gender expenditure has been enhanced with the inclusion of the gender-disaggregated data available per programme in the programme performance statements (Annex 4 to the present report).

The total of the EU budget, based on the aggregation of the 2024 interventions qualifying for each score, has been allocated as shown below. In line with the methodology, a programme may qualify for one or more gender scores based on the objectives pursued by its respective interventions.

Score 2: interventions the principal objective of which is to improve gender equality corresponded to 2.7% of the EU budget implemented in 2024 and were included in 13 programmes.
Score 1: interventions that have gender equality as an important and deliberate objective (but not as the main reason for the intervention) corresponded to 16.8% of the EU budget implemented in 2024 and were included in 22 programmes.
Score 0*: interventions that have the potential to contribute to gender equality corresponded to 15.7% of the EU budget implemented in 2024 and were included in 8 programmes.
Score 0: interventions that do not have a significant bearing on gender equality corresponded to 64.8% of the EU budget implemented in 2024 and were included in 45 programmes.

In 2024 19.5% of the EU budget contributed to promoting gender equality (scores 2 and 1), representing a significant increase from previous years. This notable progress underscores the EU’s firm commitment to integrating gender mainstreaming into the EU budget, ensuring that budget allocations actively support policies advancing gender equality.

Contribution to gender equality as reported in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024

^{NB: Each graph is based on the percentages reported at the time of the publication of the annual management performance reports for the 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 financial years, respectively. For 2024 the percentages are rounded up.}
^{Source: European Commission.}
The 2024 results reflect the progress achieved by various programmes in terms of both implementation and reporting capacity, allowing the capture of the contribution of the EU budget to gender equality at a more granular level. In particular, the sustained reduction in 0* demonstrates the ongoing efforts to refine budget assessments and enhance gender-focused allocations. A key example in 2024 is the common agricultural policy. Following a reassessment of the measures financed by the policy that include a focus on gender equality, in 2024 the EU budget commitments for this programme from 2021 to 2024 were assigned scores of 1 and 0, from the previous 0* score. This adjustment reflects a more accurate recognition of the policy’s gender-relevant components and highlights the EU’s ongoing efforts to improve how gender considerations are measured within its financial programmes.

In concrete terms, the EU allocated overall EUR 38 billion to projects promoting gender equality in 2024 (gender scores 2 and 1). This figure is lower than the EUR 48 billion reported for 2023, mainly due to the phasing out of the Recovery and Resilience Facility commitments in 2024, which accounted for EUR 8.4 billion under scores 1 and 2 in 2023. While the total expenditure supporting gender equality is lower in 2024, the proportion of funding directed towards gender equality increased.

Contribution to gender scores 1 and 2 for 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 (million EUR)

^{NB: Based on the amounts reported in the annual management performance reports for the 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 financial years, respectively.}

^Source:^{European Commission.}

It is important to note that in 2024, the Ukraine Facility and the Western Balkan Facility entered into force. Given the recent start of their operations, only beginning in the second half of 2024, budgetary commitments under both programmes were attributed a gender score of 0*. Excluding these programmes, the share of the EU budget contributing to gender equality would have shown a further increase to 21.5% in 2024, compared to the reported 19.5%, whereas 0* would have shown a decrease to 6.6%, compared to the reported 15.7%.

Budget
12 June 2025

Gender overview 2025

2021-2024 aggregate trends

Past expenditure is revised annually through a quality review conducted by the Commission departments, incorporating additional information available on the selected projects. This is particularly the case for measures that were initially assigned a gender score of 0* in previous years. In this context, the reassessment concluded that, over the 2021-2024 period, a total of 12% of the EU budget expenditure contributed to the promotion of gender (gender scores 1 and 2), amounting to a significant EUR 158.4 billion over these four years.

At the same time, the share of EU budget under gender score 0* has steadily declined and now stands at just 5% for the four-year period⁽⁶⁾. This reflects the effectiveness of the Commission’s ongoing reassessment efforts, which have contributed to a more precise and clearer understanding of the EU budget support for gender equality. For the 2021-2024 period, 83% of allocations were assigned a score of 0, due to the systematic reassessment of 0* expenditure from 2021 to 2024.

The financial commitments made over this four-year period had a tangible impact across various domains, including employment, social protection and economic empowerment, reinforcing the EU’s role as a global leader in gender equality financing.

^{(6) 4% without taking into account the Ukraine Facility and the Western Balkan Facility, which were temporarily attributed a 0* give their recent creation.}

Gender scores as a percentage of the total EU budget (2021-2024)

^{NB: These percentages include the revised figures for 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 following the reassessment of score 0* and were aggregated to calculate the overall percentages of the gender scores over the 2021-2024 period.}

^Source:^{European Commission.}

Gender-disaggregated data

This year, for the second time, the programme performance statements (Annex 4 to this report), which provide detailed performance information at the programme level, were enhanced to include the relevant gender-disaggregated information available for each programme. This includes a wide array of gender-disaggregated data aimed at improving the monitoring of the performance of the programme in relation to gender equality. For some programmes, particularly those under shared and indirect management, the availability of gender-disaggregated data is constrained by the programme regulations and the implementation agreements.

Looking ahead to the post-2027 multiannual financial framework, the co-legislators have agreed to include in the Financial Regulation ⁽⁷⁾ a requirement to ensure that all data collected in relation to performance indicators of the financial programmes will be gender-disaggregated where appropriate. This is a significant step towards improving gender equality monitoring in EU programmes and complements the updated better regulation guidelines, which will ensure that future ex ante impact assessments of all relevant spending programmes duly consider the effects on gender equality from the start.

^{(7) Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 September 2024 on the financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union, OJ L, 2024/2509, 26.9.2024, ELI:}^{http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/2509/oj}^.

Examples of gender-disaggregated data reported in the programme performance statements

Under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, participants in education and training supported by the Recovery and Resilience Facility amounted to a total of 4.29 million across all age groups in 2024. Of this total, 2.37 million were female, 1.92 million were male and 499 were non-binary. Moreover, the number of young people aged 15–29 receiving support in 2024 amounted to 969 960 were male, 848 584 were female and 204 were non-binary.

Under Horizon Europe, as of January 2024, women project coordinators represented 31% of Horizon Europe projects. This reflects a notable increase in the share of women-led consortia, up from 23% for Horizon 2020. Moreover, women make up 51.4% of participants in Horizon Europe boards and expert groups, with 74 women (52.9%) in official expert groups and 38 women (48.7%) in special groups. Similarly, among researchers in Horizon Europe, 37.8% are women (75 114), 62.1% are men (123 472), and 0.1% (189) are non-binary.

Under Erasmus, in 2023, 60% of the provided mobility opportunities were taken up by women. The gender distribution varied depending on the field of education: adult education had the highest percentage of women (70%), followed by school education (67%), higher education (61%), youth education (58%) and vocational education and training (54%).

Under the common agricultural policy, the total number of farmers receiving direct support (provisional data for 2024) was 5 713 335. This included 1 796 858 women (31.45%), 3 612 428 men (63.23%) and 1 841 non-binary individuals (0.03%), 229 833 non-prevalence responses⁽⁸⁾ (4.02%) and 72 232 prefer-not-to-say responses (1.26%)

Under the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance, 628 418 people directly benefitted from EU-supported interventions that aim to reduce social and economic inequality. Available sex-disaggregated data indicates that at least 202 532 were female and 191 068 were male ⁽⁹⁾.

Under the humanitarian aid programme, the percentage of beneficiaries disaggregated by gender in 2024 is as follows: 48% female, 39% male, and 13% unknown ⁽¹⁰⁾.

_{(8) For cases where a perfect gender balance in the decision-making power occurs between different genders}

_{(9) The reported values are aggregates of data collected at the intervention level. Some of these datasets included sex-disaggregated information, while others did not. As a result, the sum of male and female beneficiaries does not match the overall total.}

_{(10) Number of beneficiaries by age and sex reached by humanitarian aid operations available in EVA actions operational data (such data reflect information encoded in Fiche Opérationnelle and in the European Hospital and Healthcare Federation).}