Gender Equality Working Group

The European Union has maintained a policy of “gender mainstreaming” – planning to implement a gender perspective in all policy areas – since 1996. Despite aiming to understand and tackle inequalities between genders, the EU still scores just 67.9 points out of 100 on the Gender Equality Index and the journey towards gender equality is increasingly complex, uneven, and nonlinear. Similarly, individual states across Europe struggle to tackle a diverse range of gender equality policy issues including gender-based violence, abortion and female-led migration. 

There has recently been a backlash against aspects of gender equality in Europe, and issues surrounding gender equality have been increasingly politicised. Tensions are increasingly apparent as liberal “European values” or the gender equalising goals clash with traditional systems and ideals across Europe. Backlash has been uneven with European states moving in dramatically different directions on gender equalising issues.

European states and the European Union are also international actors, exporting their goals and attitudes on gender equality to other regions and states. Their actions and agendas, both internal and external, intentional and unintentional, have global effects on gender equality.

The EST Working Group on Gender Equality believes in the goal of gender equality. It therefore aims to understand where and how Europe has failed to deliver gender equality and to find solutions and strategies to further gender equality.

Head of the Working Group – Róisín Keenan

Róisín Keenan is an avid advocate for human rights, and women’s rights in particular. She is a second-year PhD researcher investigating the experiences of women political prisoners, gendered state violence, and the post-conflict sphere. She holds a BA Joint Honours undergraduate degree in History and International Relations, and an LLM, Masters of Law, in International Human Rights Law, from Queen’s University Belfast.

Róisín has utilised her academic career to center women’s experiences from the political sidelining of women in Irish history, to the human trafficking of Indigenous women and subsequent lacking legal gaps. She has ran and spoke at events, and co-authored papers, on issues such as gender violence amongst other pressing issues. Róisín aims to once again lead this years’ working group to find the gaps in gender research, believing that education and empowerment are key to gender justice and advocacy. 

Marta Kołodziej

Marta is based in Prague, Czechia, where she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in sociology, specializing in civil society and politics. She completed a BA degree with distinction in the Netherlands in International Studies and realised a 5-month exchange program to Chile.

In her thesis project, she examined the practices of imagining alternative social and economic relations within the fabric of the 2019 Social Uprising of Chile. An important part of this research was underlining how the Chilean feminist movements inspired the initiatives of assembly-making and common pots, demonstrating the potential of bottom-up mobilisation outside of the traditional protest action. In her research, Marta adopts an intersectional approach, focusing on power imbalances, collective action, and social movements.

Fun fact: one of her hobbies is climbing, even though she’s afraid of heights.

Emma Cavalieri

Emma is currently completing the final year of a Bachelor’s degree in European Studies, majoring in European Public Law. Originally form Venice, Italy, she studied within a consortium of European Universities and is currently pursuing her minor in Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh.
Passionate about Gender Equality, her academic interests focus on the social and economic dimensions of EU policymaking.

Clàudia Larumbe Serra

Clàudia is a researcher and project coordinator working at the intersection of social innovation, feminist analysis, and European public policy. She has a BA in Sociocultural Gender Studies and has recently completed her Master’s degree in International Relations, Security and Development at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her experience spans youth participation, democratic innovation, and ethical digital development, with a strong focus on qualitative and participatory research methods.

She has collaborated with European and Mediterranean networks on projects related to climate justice, gender equality, and digital rights, contributing through research, facilitation, and knowledge production. Alongside her research, she is an ambassador for the YouthDecide2040 project and a Youth Council representative for the SoReDi project on participatory governance in tech for ESADE.

Fun fact: cheetah Girls 2 was filmed in her hometown.

Alexandra Nadal Sorando

Alexandra is an activist committed to diversity and gender equality, with an interest in social justice, civil society movements and intersectionality. Through her Bachelor’s in Global Studies, she acquired a multidisciplinary perspective to approaching social issues shaped by transnational actors and with transnational consequences. She also holds a Master’s in Gender Studies – Intersectionality and Change, which has equipped her with a nuanced understanding of identity issues and discrimination by engaging with a myriad of feminist epistemologies, methodologies, and ethics to critically assess current events in academia as well as the political arena.

She adopts a strongly critical perspective with a focus on discourse and democratic practices, and her academic research has mainly focused on policy, media, and discourse analysis of issues related to sexual violence and gender identity. Furthermore, her volunteering experience ranges from teaching Catalan through non-formal education to Catalano-German children in Stuttgart, to supporting high school students in Lleida in establishing and running their own feminist assembly.

Fun fact: she has a lovely cat named Cloe, although she’s allergic to her fur.

Letizia Rovere

Letizia is a 22-years-old Master’s student based in Turin, Italy. In 2025, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in International relations, Development and Cooperation, writing her final thesis on the impact of gender stereotypes in criminal proceedings. She is now pursuing a Master’s in European Legal Studies at the University of Turin.

Her academic interests encompass European Union law, gender equality, migration and the protection of human rights through legal instruments. Her approach to research values multidisciplinarity, drawing on political science, social studies and law.
She is passionate about access to education and she has volunteered in projects focused on informal learning.

Klára Tempelova’

Klára is an advocate for gender justice interested in exploring structural inequalities within our society. During her Bachelor’s degree in Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics at the University of Amsterdam, she focused on a wide range of issues connected to gender inequality mainly from a political science perspective. This interdisciplinary background gives Klára a unique viewpoint, which she utilizes in her research.

In her Bachelor’s thesis, she explored the available avenues of justice (both judicial and non-judicial) for sexual exploitation and abuse victims with peacekeeper-fathered children in Haiti. She views research as the necessary first step for change to take place. Currently, Klára is pursuing her Master’s degree in European Environmental Economics and Policy and continues to enrich her interdisciplinary perspective.

Fun fact: ice coffee lover.

Theodoros Vlachos

Theodoros Vlachos (they/them) holds expertise of social inclusion, diversity, and policy development, with an interdisciplinary background in Social Work and International Relations (MSc, Aalborg University). They have professional experience in humanitarian and community organisations, NGOs, and corporate environments, focusing on children and adolescent protection, and their families, supporting vulnerable groups, and DE&I communications. Their research interests include, but are not limited to, gender governance, heteroprofessionalism, mad and queer studies, and intersectional frameworks, contributing to broader discourse around non-binary and gender non-conforming identities.