Strasbourg, 13/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 12 February, the Council of Europe (COE) published its 2014 annual report on the entry into force of the Convention on the Strategy for Equality between Men and Women (part of the 2014-2017 strategy) to help its member states reduce sexual inequality in their country.
Among the highlights of 2014 listed in the report is the coming into fore of the Convention on Prevention and Tackling Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (aka the Istanbul Convention), which is already a global reference and considered as an absolute law by UN Women and which was awarded the Vision Award 2014 prize. Several key events promoted COE standards in 2014, such as a conference on images of women in the media, a conference on Tackling gender stereotypes in and through education and events around women's access to justice. Challenges remain, however, and the 2014 report mentions over-frequent use of gender stereotypes, for example, to preserve male dominance, sexist behaviour that prevents women from making progress, violence against women and cuts in public spending under austerity that prevent governments from monitoring or even implementing COE standards. In order to deal with this, the COE will provide a series of already scheduled programmes to help the member states. The annual report makes a series of recommendations on how to boost sexual equality at the COE itself by training agents in how to tackle sexism and gender stereotypes. (Véronique Leblanc)