European Feminist Platform | Heinrich Böll Stiftung | Brussels office

Project archive

The European Feminist Platform was a joint project between the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union and the Gunda Werner Institut that run from 2019 to 2022.

It connected activists, scholars and political decision makers to collect, display and contextualize knowledge and best feminist practices in order to make them fruitful for feminist struggles and policies.

Highlights

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Discourses on demography in the EU institutions

E-paper

This paper finds that the decline of birth rates has been addressed by the European Commission in a way that leaves it as an open frame, which is filled by the right-wing parties. With respect to demographic discourses on migration, the EU Commission seems to have promoted an interpretative template that also allows for arguments on anti-migration discourses.

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What?

The European Feminist Platform:

Connects feminists from all over Europe: from academia, activism and policy-making
Provides a supportive space that allows flexible and long-lasting alliances
Provides a structure and resources for feminist knowledge by building on experience and best practices from different fields of expertise and organizations

Why?

The goal of the European Feminist Platform is to:

Create a bridge between feminists - across nations and disciplines
Provide progressive answers and promote a feminist discourse
Amplify intersectional feminism
Create a proactive feminist future by feminists for feminists
Come up with a genuinely feminist vision

How?

The European Feminist Platform acts by:

Producing and exchanging knowledge on EU policy making and feminist issues through events and publications
Academically analysing strategies e.g. of the enemies of reproductive rights
Translating academic knowledge into activist tools and vice versa
Expressing feminist political demands from a policy perspective to fill the gap in the public discourse (advocacy) and to lobby for feminist interests and demands
Responding to antifeminism, xenophobia and neoliberal exploitation
Talking with people not about people

Who we are

Members of the European Feminist Platform

Four disturbing aspects to Slovakia limiting abortion access for Ukrainian women

Commentary

More reports about rapes by the Russian army against the Ukrainian girls and women who are arriving in Slovakia have been exposed. In the meantime, the Slovak parliament is discussing proposals on banning abortion for women without permanent residency. This cynical targeting of Ukrainian girls and women is disturbing, says Denisa Nešťáková.

By Dr. Denisa Nešťáková

Four reasons why care fails and gender-based violence remains resilient in a 'crisis' context

Commentary

What does care mean in a Covid-19 pandemic context? Why does care fail and gender-based violence becomes even more resilient in itself, despite being conceptualised as a "pandemic within a pandemic" in a context of intensifying sexism, culturalist stereotypes and xenophobia, not to mention social policing and the intensive securitization of borders and mobility?

By Eirini Avramopoulou

Time as an instrument of domination and liberation: four reasons why we need a time revolution in the healthcare sector

Commentary

How can we merge all the things that are happening right now, on Lesbos, in Kabul and in Ahrweiler, and map them on our own timeline? How do we know what is important for our present time? Melanie Wilke and Hannah Gruber ellaborate on the societal contexts behind the ever-present lack of time, particularly in relation to health and healthcare.

By Melanie Wilke and Hannah Gruber

“2015 must never be allowed to happen again”: that is the mantra

Commentary

This short sentence is all you need to understand why the German government committed an error of judgment concerning Afghanistan. An error of judgment that kills people every day – and democracy throughout the world as well, by the way.

By Dr Ines Kappert

Three readings of one law: Reregulating sexuality in Hungary

Commentary

The Hungarian government has received international criticism over a new law that bans the depiction or promotion of homosexuality to those under the age of 18. Andrea Pető argues that the law may well prove to be a miscalculation by the country’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán.

By Andrea Pető

Three reasons why the Polish government’s war on human freedoms is also your problem

Commentary

Modern-day authoritarians will boil you like a frog, whilst slowly turning up the heat. As a citizen of a democratic state, governed by the rule of law, you won’t suddenly wake up one day to find yourself in an authoritarian regime. It will creep up on you. Hiding behind empty slogans such as “regaining national sovereignty” and “national pride”.

By Eliza Rutynowska

Four reasons why Gender Studies has changed because of illiberal attacks, and why it matters

Commentary

Systematic and systemic attacks on Gender Studies are part of anti-gender campaigns and online public harassment, associated with the anti-gender movement, a nationalist, neoconservative response to the triple crisis (migration, financial and security). These illiberal attacks are gaining much support all over Europe.

By Andrea Pető

Library of Leuven's University (Belgium)

Defending Plurality: Four Reasons Why We Need to Rethink Academic Freedom in Europe

Commentary

Academic freedom is under attack, both in authoritarian democracies and in liberal Western democracies. Dominant discourses about academic freedom and free speech in the global north, lately especially in France and Germany, focus on an alleged threat to academic freedom through "political correctness" and "cancel culture", that, under scrutiny, often turn out to be exactly the opposite, namely defences of plurality and critical voices.

By Dr. Karsten Schubert

Four reasons why Poland’s war on abortion should scare you

Commentary

This is not just ‘Poland being Poland’. These actions are illegal, inhumane and could spread across Europe – and this is just the beginning.

By Neil Datta

Feminist policy as collateral damage?

Article

The change of government in Austria after the Ibiza affair on the one hand lead to a withdrawal of antifeminist (politically right) populist measures of the prior turquoise-blue government. On the other hand, existing structures of disadvantage and oppression have not been questioned by the successor government.

By Judith Goetz

Our events

A feminist exploration #1: Covid-19

A feminist exploration #2: Demography

A feminist exploration #3: The great replacement

A feminist exploration #4: Intersectionality

A feminist exploration #5: Visibility & symbolic politics

A feminist exploration #6: SRHR, democracy & rule of law in Poland

A feminist exploration #7: Constructing “security” during a pandemic

A feminist exploration #8: Gender-based violence, care provisions and resilience during Covid-19 in Greece

A feminist exploration #9: Discourses on demography in the EU institutions

A feminist exploration #10: Counteracting feminicide!

Related content

Is the EU a feminist actor?

Commentary

The inclusion of feminist principles is an important progressive step in the EU’s external relations policymaking. A result of this inclusion has been the development of gender equality policies aimed at conflict situations and in international development assistance. Arguably, the EU is a leader in gender equality within the foreign policy arena. Yet, while the integration of feminism has supported concrete gender equality policies, the narrow interpretation of feminism undermines its transformative potential and highlights coherency gaps in the EU’s approach.

By Toni Haastrup

No Women - No Peace: 20 years of UNSC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security

Dossier

On 31 October 2000, the UN Security Council adopted the Landmark Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. On its 20th anniversary, this dossier portrays women from 20 countries that make a difference in peace and security.

Feminist, decolonial economic solutions to address interconnected global crises

E-paper

The undeniable connections among the multiple crises that humanity faces today -- climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality, poverty, and the Covid-19 pandemic -- demand interconnected, rather than segmented, macro solutions. Responses must be systemic and address the structural dynamics and shortcomings of governance, economics and finance. A feminist and decolonial framing provides a lens for proposed reforms.

By Emilia Reyes

Surveillance: Feminist Perspectives Urgently Required

Dossier

A collection of articles which show different aspects of gender questions in a world of data collection and digital surveillance.

Sheffield's Women of Steel - COVID-19: We can beat this

The great leveller? How Covid-19 responses could widen gender inequality in the UK

Commentary

The coronavirus pandemic – just like society – runs along fault lines of gender, race, class and other inequalities. With women over-represented in vulnerable frontline jobs, there are fears that technologies proposed to tackle the pandemic could inflict harms that differ based on gender.

By Ella Jakubowska

Why the European Green Deal needs ecofeminism

Report

This report maps the gender gaps and opportunities in the EU’s flagship European Green Deal. It explores how, though gender issues affect environmental policies and vice-versa, they are not integrated into the European Green Deal, and provides recommendations on how to move from gender-blind to gender-transformative environmental policies. These include intersectional and gender equal environmental objectives, moving towards a feminist economy of well-being and care and ensuring the use of gender mainstreaming methodologies in environmental policies.

pdf

The European Green Deal and Gender Diversity

Conversation

Is the European Green Deal gender blind? How can the EU deal with the danger of a backlash on gender equality in the face of pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis? Which ways forward are there to better connect the feminist and climate movements?

By Dr Ines Kappert

Contact person

Melanie Bernhofer

Head of Programme - Climate, Trade and Agricultural Policy (Parental leave replacement) & Project Officer, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union

The European Feminist Platform was a joint project between the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union and the Gunda Werner Institut that run from 2019 to 2022.

It connected activists, scholars and political decision makers to collect, display and contextualize knowledge and best feminist practices in order to make them fruitful for feminist struggles and policies.

Highlights

Discourses on demography in the EU institutions

What?

Why?

How?

Who we are

Members of the European Feminist Platform

Articles by our members & friends

Four disturbing aspects to Slovakia limiting abortion access for Ukrainian women

Four reasons why care fails and gender-based violence remains resilient in a 'crisis' context

Time as an instrument of domination and liberation: four reasons why we need a time revolution in the healthcare sector

“2015 must never be allowed to happen again”: that is the mantra

Three readings of one law: Reregulating sexuality in Hungary

Three reasons why the Polish government’s war on human freedoms is also your problem

Four reasons why Gender Studies has changed because of illiberal attacks, and why it matters

Defending Plurality: Four Reasons Why We Need to Rethink Academic Freedom in Europe

Four reasons why Poland’s war on abortion should scare you

Feminist policy as collateral damage?

Our events

Related content

Is the EU a feminist actor?

No Women - No Peace: 20 years of UNSC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security

Feminist, decolonial economic solutions to address interconnected global crises

Surveillance: Feminist Perspectives Urgently Required

The great leveller? How Covid-19 responses could widen gender inequality in the UK

Why the European Green Deal needs ecofeminism

The European Green Deal and Gender Diversity

Contact person

Melanie Bernhofer

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