If you live in Europe, your country is likely a member of the Council of Europe, a 46-member body founded in 1949 that ostensibly promotes democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. The council has had a profound impact on international law through frameworks including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, which are now embedded in the laws of European states.
“Any feminist who challenges this will be cast as an extremist.”
The council’s laws, unlike those promulgated by the better-known European Union, are optional, but they are nonetheless sweeping in their cultural influence. Member states can sign on (and most do), but there is no mechanism to enforce compliance, which makes the council’s influence easily overlooked by the public. But it is closely watched by lobbyists who know that what fails at the national level can often be pushed from the top down by international institutions.
One of the council’s latest initiatives, the Gender Equality Strategy 2024-2029, should have been a clear roadmap for women’s rights. Instead, it is a fog of ideological confusion, where the meaning of “gender” drifts between reality and ideology, leaving women’s rights at the mercy of wordplay.
For decades, the Council of Europe was a staunch advocate for women’s rights. In 1950, soon after its founding, it enshrined the prohibition of sex discrimination in Article 14 of the ECHR. The European Court of Human Rights built a body of case law addressing sex-based discrimination. For decades, these institutions’ support for “gender equality” meant one thing: equality between women and men. This definition was uncontroversial, reflected in laws, rulings, and policies alike. The 2003 council recommendation on balanced participation in politics is a clear example: it explicitly referred to “women and men,” as well as “both or either sexes.”
Somewhere along the way, that clarity disappeared.
Around 2010, the Yogyakarta Principles were developed by a group of human-rights advocates at a conference held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This document gave an impetus to the once-niche activist attempt to conflate sex with gender, and to replace “sex” with “gender identity.” The effect has been to reshape the language of women’s rights. By 2010, concepts like “gender identity” and “gender expression”—once confined to activist circles—had made their way into international agreements like the Istanbul Convention.
The Council of Europe now pushes “gender equality” beyond its original meaning, blurring biological sex with socially constructed gender while expanding to include diverse gender identities and expressions. It amounts to layers upon layers of ideology stacked into a precarious tower waiting to topple.
The strategy uses “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, rendering its guidance on violence against women meaningless. Is femicide the killing of women because of their sex or their gender? The document says both: Femicide is sex-based, but violence against women is gender-based. Should states collect data on sex to understand who is affected, or should they focus on gender identities? The strategy calls for sex-disaggregated data while undermining the very concept of sex, creating contradictions that make policies and statistics meaningless.
This isn’t a mistake—it’s a deliberate ideological shift. The strategy enshrines gender-identity ideology into policy under the guise of women’s rights. In this new world, gender is both a harmful social construct and an innate identity—something to be dismantled and protected all at once.
Perhaps the most troubling part of the strategy is its treatment of “gender-critical” feminists—those who argue that biological sex matters, especially in spaces where women’s safety and dignity are at stake. The Council of Europe lumps them together with “anti-gender” activists, in order to associate them with far-right politics and reactionary views on women’s rights. The document claims that gender-critical narratives are used to “justify discriminatory practices” and “undermine the understanding of gender as a social construct.” The message is clear: Only the Council of Europe can say what makes a woman and redefine gender, and any feminist who disagrees will be cast as an extremist.
This is nothing new. Feminists have long been attacked for defending women’s rights. But now it is by a major human rights organization in the guise of “progress.” The very women who fought to break down traditional gender roles are accused of getting in the way—not by conservatives, but by a body that once championed their cause. Feminists have always been the enemy of those who hate women, whether that hatred is wrapped in conservative values or progressive theories.
Human rights are universal, but not all demands are rights. Self-ID laws are proving disastrous: Violent male offenders are turning up in women’s prisons, and courts are struggling to define what a woman is. Great Britain, which resisted this shift, is now asking its Supreme Court to define “woman”—a question that belongs in philosophy seminars, not in the nation’s top court. The stakes are high. The court will not only decide who can legally call themselves women but also who can access the rights and protections that women have fought for over generations.
The Council of Europe is peddling an ideological agenda that no longer serves women. And as Europe sleepwalks into a world where words have no meaning and women’s rights are whatever fashionable delusion is currently in favor, the council will have played its part in making sure women pay the price.