We PUSHed to include Midwives in the European Parliament Strategies for Gender Equality and Women’s Health

A major shift is underway in Europe: midwives are now being recognised as essential to both women’s health and gender equality. The European Parliament’s resolutions mark a historic milestone—midwifery is now explicitly recognised as essential to gender-responsive health systems and a key level to advancing women’s health.  

We are proud to have contributed to the public consultations and mobilised civil society partners to influence two European Parliament’s Strategies on Gender Equality and on Women’s Health. This outcome was shaped by coordinated advocacy efforts. Through public consultations, the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) and PUSH partners submitted evidence-based recommendations and mobilised midwifery associations across Europe, with multiple countries reinforcing a unified call: midwives must be part of the solution.

Civil society advocacy including those coordinated by PUSH helped shape the proposed EU Strategy on Women’s Health, which calls for a comprehensive, life-course approach. The strategy recognises that women spend a greater proportion of their lives in poor health due to gaps in prevention, diagnosis, and care. It emphasises sexual and reproductive health and rights, including access to contraception, safe abortion, and respectful maternity care—areas where midwives play a central role.

We added our voice to the Recommendations for EU Strategy for Women’s Health highlighting what evidence has long shown: quality midwifery care improves maternal and newborn outcomes, reduces unnecessary medical interventions, and enhances women’s experiences of care. Globally, midwives can deliver up to 90% of essential sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, and adolescent health services, and scaling midwifery could prevent over 80% of maternal deaths, stillbirths, and neonatal deaths. These outcomes are not only health gains—they are fundamental to gender equality, enabling women to survive, thrive, and exercise their rights.  

Further to this, the recent unlocking impact report highlights that midwives are a key to unlocking gender equality: “With a workforce of over 93% women, investment in midwifery closes gender pay gaps, increases female representation in leadership, and advances women’s economic empowerment. Midwives not only provide care but also advocate for women’s rights, bodily autonomy, and leadership. Moreover, investing in midwives is also a critical level to closing the women’s health gap and has the potential of adding over a trillion dollars per year to the global economy by 2040”

Our recommendations to enhance the EU gender equality strategy included:

• Explicitly include midwives in the EU Gender Equality Strategy as central actors across all pillars, including health, economic empowerment, leadership, and research.  

• Strengthen action on gender-based violence (GBV) by integrating midwives into prevention and response efforts—particularly addressing obstetric violence—and ensuring safe, violence-free working conditions for health workers.  

• Prioritise sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) by including a dedicated women’s health section in the Strategy, funding midwife-led, woman-centred care, and supporting SRHR and women’s rights globally, including in fragile settings.  

• Invest in midwives as leaders and decision-makers by embedding midwifery strengthening into EU global health and gender programming and promoting women’s leadership in health systems.  

• Advance a gender-equal economy by expanding the midwifery workforce, ensuring equal pay and leadership opportunities, and increasing funding for women-led and women-serving health interventions.  

• Address gender bias in research and innovation by involving midwives in health research, investing in gender-responsive data systems, and funding women-centred and midwife-led innovations, including through EU programmes and public-private partnerships.  

• Adopt an intersectional approach that prioritises underserved groups, including women in rural areas and those in migration and asylum contexts.

The European Parliament has now called on the European Commission to take concrete steps, including developing EU-wide standards for antenatal, childbirth, and postnatal midwifery care, and updating the Midwifery Directive to align with global standards. These actions are critical to ensuring midwives can practise to their full scope and deliver the care women need.

While the EU’s Women’s Health Strategy successfully integrated the recommendation for scaling midwifery, the European Commission’s Gender Equality Strategy still does not explicitly mention midwives. Our advocacy is still needed.  

As the EU moves from strategy to implementation, the role of civil society remains critical. Ensuring that these commitments lead to real change will require continued advocacy, accountability, and partnership. Because when midwives are empowered, women’s health improves—and when women’s health improves, societies move closer to true equality.  

Join us and be part of the coalition PUSHing for change: for rights, for women and for midwives.  

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