In Europe, women face many challenges to empowerment in both overcoming hurdles to gain power, and in the existing strategies attempting to bridge these divisions.

 

It is important to consider how women's empowerment is framed within European strategies, and how the goal of  women’s empowerment and the practices developed to solve it link within other policy focuses.

 

Women’s empowerment in Europe has faced the challenge of how strategies are presented, often lacking a clear goal or an adequate definition of the struggles faced by women. This can be seen in the case of the Steering Committees of the Council of Europe on Gender Mainstreaming, where empowerment strategies are only considered as a small aspect of gender equality, which presents a challenge for using tools and techniques to specifically deal with women’s empowerment (Verloo, 2005). 

 

Furthermore, the challenges of women’s empowerment often link directly to issues within states, and how gender bias and privileges have been barriers within specific country contexts. There is often a conflict between the positive outcome of women’s empowerment, and the motivations and desires behind creating change. This can be seen in the recent cases of some multinational corporations, which have become involved in empowerment initiatives, yet do not do this for the greater good but rather for their own profits and exploitation. For example, in Central, East and South East Europe, there have been numerous cases of companies involved in empowerment campaigns, whilst exploiting women in sweatshop labor under the claims of liberation (Hickel, 2014). This conflicts with the aim of liberation as it places a downward pressure on working conditions and ever cheaper wages for women instead of empowering them. 

 

Within the coronavirus pandemic, as well as within the AIDS epidemic, insufficient progress has been made to empower women to deal with the changing burdens and deepening inequalities within society, including in challenges to caregiving burdens, healthcare access, power, health, discrimination and violence (UNICEF, 2018). Research from UNGEI emphasizes this challenge by signalling the importance of financial barriers to develop empowerment and avoid exclusion through the coronavirus pandemic, whereby the importance of online channels and mobile money have become increasingly important to continue the functioning of small businesses and education for young women. The pandemic has also increased the intersection of inequalities faced by those most vulnerable, and therefore challenges to women’s empowerment have experienced a multiplier effect when in combination with other societal, racial and environmental concerns.