The aim of this study is to analyse the impact that COVID-19 has had on the Roma population, showing results of a telephone interview on a sample of 592 Roma households in phase 0 of confinement. This study has been developed by means of an alliance in which researchers from the public universities of Alicante and Navarre and the Health Institute Carlos III have participated, as well as several Roma associations. The results reflect the significant impact that the pandemic has caused in households that were already affected by social exclusion and inequality. This impact goes beyond health and affects all dimensions of social inclusion, from employment to education, including income, meeting basic needs and discrimination.

Roma women face multiple inequalities at the intersections of ethnicity, gender, and class. Framed by Romani feminism, studies have explored Roma women’s own perspectives and experiences, drawing attention to the diversity within this group and the specificities of their social position due to the complex forms of discrimination they face. Drawing on interviews with Spanish Roma women, this article contributes to and extends this strand of research by exploring Roma women’s experiences and constructions of womanhood and motherhood. We found the construction of womanhood to be focused on the effective management of responsibilities, particularly caring and household tasks. Moreover, Roma women defined motherhood as a valued experience for them and their communities. A homemaker position was associated with mattering, something, we argue, which needs to be understood in the context of racial hostility, exclusion, and precarity in which Roma women live.

Previous research has highlighted different factors that limit educational success and continuity in Roma children and young adults, outlining both those linked to cultural identity and those derived from structural racism, which also affect the education system. The aim of this study is to understand how gender influences education for Roma women in Spain and to identify possible changes and/or continuities for formal education and motherhood in their discourses. This research is based on a qualitative methodology, encompassing 19 interviews with Roma women aged between 18 and 67 and residents in the province of Alicante, Spain. The results show that Roma women consider education as something relevant and should not be abandoned. Success at school is not understood as an element of assimilation, nor as something incompatible with Roma identity. Quite the opposite, studying is perceived as a strategy to obtain a better job in the future, but also as a project for personal development and growth, as well as an empowerment tool, both inside and outside the community. Nonetheless, educational continuity requires not only changes in its assessment by the Roma community, but also interventions on the structural barriers that prevent balancing life and studies when a woman is already a mother.

Empowerment evaluation (EE) is an especially useful tool that enables people to be involved in both individual and group transformation processes, in particular in contexts characterized by social inequality. By using a participatory approach, this methodological article analyses an Empowerment Evaluation experience within the European RoMoMatteR project. This project, which focuses on the notion of reproductive justice, has involved a group of Roma girls from Alicante (Spain), in a context characterized by discrimination based on ethnicity, gender and age, as well as by structural determinants such as social exclusion. The main research objective has been to analyse the relevance of the methodology designed to assess how project participants have developed a sense of autonomy and the acquisition of socio‐cultural resources as assets for their future life choices. Therefore, the study design has followed the model proposed by Fetterman for Empowerment Evaluation: establishing a mission to be assessed, participatory diagnosis of the current status and finally planning for the future to start the desired change. Fetterman's model was adapted by designing and organizing participatory workshops with the girls involved in the project. The results confirm the relevance of the methodological proposal of the workshops to engage aspects of empowerment. The findings also allow to detect the empowerment of the Roma girls especially in two areas of the project: reaching the proposed objectives and the methodology used to register significant information. In the first case, the results show that Roma girls' establish a critical perspective on the idea of reproductive justice, and related to this, the activation of proactive behaviours linked to the acquisition of socio‐cultural resources in the development of visions of their personal futures. In the second case, the Roma girls have also shown empowerment in decision‐making on technical aspects, methodological design and taking action aimed at the collective construction of useful information in the project.

A large part of the European Roma community faces prejudices, discrimination, and social exclusion. This situation is more visible in Roma women. This study assesses gender sensitivity in the National Roma Integration Strategies (NRIS) of the Member States of the European Union. To do so, an adapted ad hoc tool was applied to the twenty-seven NRIS documents, making it possible to identify gender sensitivity in its “symbolic dimension”—declaration of principles and values that guide the action and/or proposing reasons of the intervention; and in its “operational dimension”—formal aspects of the intervention. In addition, this tool allowed us to classify the documents according to their gender approach. A low gender sensitivity is observed, which is more developed in the symbolic part. The line of action with greater gender sensitivity is health, followed by employment and education. Gender sensitivity is nonexistent for housing.