Gender equality is a cornerstone of building a fair and sustainable world. Despite progress in recent decades, women and girls continue to face systemic barriers that limit their opportunities, rights, and representation. From unequal access to education and healthcare to gender-based violence and underrepresentation in leadership roles, these challenges persist across all regions and sectors. According to the United Nations, achieving gender equality is not only a fundamental human right but also essential for advancing global development and creating resilient, inclusive societies.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, focused on gender equality, emphasises the need to empower women and girls, eliminate discrimination, and ensure equal access to resources and opportunities. Achieving this goal requires targeted efforts to address gender disparities, promote women’s leadership, and challenge harmful norms and practices.

In this blog post, we explore research and initiatives that support SDG 5, focusing on three key studies. First, we look at gender inequalities in STEM and manufacturing, and we discuss efforts to create supportive spaces and raise awareness. Second, we highlight how gender mainstreaming and data collection can help tackle the challenges migrant women face in the EU, ensuring fairer policies. Finally, we reflect on feminist perspectives from literature, showing how ideas about equality have evolved over time.

Understanding the importance of Gender Action Planning in EC Horizon projects: a case study

Women face significant challenges in manufacturing, technology, and STEM careers, including unequal pay, limited access to senior roles, stereotypes, and underrepresentation. Despite decades of initiatives, progress remains slow, with women holding only 19% of IT jobs and 20% of manufacturing roles in the EU. These issues highlight the need for continued action to achieve gender equality.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) is transforming industries through technologies such as AI and robotics, but women and non-binary individuals are often excluded from designing and producing these systems, despite being key users. Recognising this, the EU has introduced guidelines to address gender inequalities, including a requirement for a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) in Horizon Europe funding proposals.

This Case Study examines the work of the Gender Action Planning (GAP) team within the Zero Defects Manufacturing Platform, a four-year EU-funded Industry4.0 project. The GAP team aimed to tackle gender disparities by creating supportive communities, raising awareness, and aligning with EU equality guidelines. Their activities and outcomes provide a model for future projects, offering practical insights for writing GEPs and promoting gender balance in research and innovation.

Gender mainstreaming and gender-disaggregated data on migrant women: WEMov’s Open Letter

The European Union includes individuals from many cultures and communities, including many migrants. Among these migrants, women play an important role, but they often face more challenges and risks than men. Despite these difficulties, migrant women contribute a lot to society and the economy, working as business owners, professionals, caregivers, activists, and community members.

This Open Letter argues that two key tools, gender mainstreaming and gender-disaggregated data, are essential to ensuring policies are fair and effective for everyone. Gender mainstreaming means integrating a gender lens into all policies, especially migration policies, to ensure they address the specific needs and experiences of women. Gender-disaggregated data is information collected separately for men and women, which helps show the differences in their experiences and allows policymakers to make better decisions based on evidence.

The letter draws on research from COST Action: Women on the Move to assess how well the EU is using these tools for migrant women. It highlights the challenges, offers solutions, and stresses the importance of working together across countries. It recommends that policymakers focus on collecting detailed, gender-disaggregated data on migrant women, covering areas such as jobs, healthcare, education, and their contributions to local economies. It also suggests that, to address women’s needs and challenges, policies should include a gender perspective at every stage.

Friendship, hope and communication during second-wave and post-feminism: Gillian E. Hanscombeʼs Between Friends and Sally Rooneyʼs Conversations with Friends

Hanscombe’s 1982 novel Between Friends and Sally Rooney’s 2017 novel Conversations with Friends both explore feminism and friendship, but they do so in very different ways because of the time periods they were written in.

In Between Friends, Hanscombe focuses on the ideas and debates of second-wave feminism, which was popular in the 1960s and 70s in the UK and US. This type of feminism was radical and focused on sexism, class differences, and whether women should separate themselves from men entirely. The story is about four women who have intense discussions about topics like hatred of women (misogyny), fear of being gay (autohomophobia), motherhood, and queer love. Some of their ideas are extreme, like creating a perfect community just for lesbians, refusing to raise male children, or even aborting male babies. These ideas show how second-wave feminists often wanted bold, sweeping solutions to the problems caused by a society dominated by men and capitalism.

On the other hand, Rooney’s Conversations with Friends takes a very different approach. The characters in this novel are aware of the challenges they face because of their gender and social class, but they don’t seek answers or solutions like the women in Between Friends. Instead, their conversations are more tentative, reflecting how modern feminism has moved away from the grand ideas of the past. The way the characters communicate, often through digital messages that feel disconnected, mirrors their struggles with love, success, and money in today’s world, which can feel aimless and unstable.

This Research Article, published as part of the Political Novel Through the Lens of Gender collection, compares these two novels to show how feminist ideas and the way people communicate have changed over time. It looks at how the characters’ beliefs and conversations reflect the impact of late capitalism on feminism and friendship.

Discover further research from authors related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, as part of the Sustainable Development Community Gateway on Open Research Europe.