My personal account of the EU, and the growing surge of demand for gender equality
Although those skeptical of the EU’s potential for positive impact on gender equality have highlighted the importance of noneconomic issues in gender inequality, this analysis has demonstrated that the ostensibly noneconomic nature of these issues has merely slowed (rather than prevented) EU engagement with these domains. This is because the different domains of the gender regime are interconnected in practice, not sealed into separate compartments of economic and noneconomic issues. When gender relations are understood as part of a gender regime, as a system, not a series of dispersed separate pheno- mena, then it is possible to see how such a wide range of inequalities may be addressed by the EU, and the specific merits of the EU regime compared to those that are developing in the United States or Asia. The particular ways gender relations are brought into the public realm are seen to matter, and the dimensions of state (versus market-led) policy making, voice for particular groups in decision making, and degrees of attention to inequality are independently crucial for making this assessment.
I have attempted to outline the new kind of gender regime devel- oping within the European Union with distinctive patterns of gender inequality. The EU’s new variety of gender regime has a public form shaped by a distinctive institutionalized practice of social inclusion articulated through a new employment-based set of regulations. Against the claims about convergence and the erosion of difference between polities offered by some theorists of globalization and of the world polity, I argue there is something distinctive here. The EU as a polity is important in the path-dependent creation of a new model of gender regime.
Both the extent of and limits to the importance of the EU for the feminist project of achieving gender equality can be best understood within the analytic context of a theory of gender regime. This allows for nuances and interconnections that cannot be captured in single- dimensional models of gender relations, which rest either on the dif- fusion of sex equality norms or the institutionalization of male bread- winner/dual-earner family forms. These cannot adequately capture the complexity of the interrelationships between the political and economic domains of the gender regime.
The EU’s development of regulations of employment(edited) in relation to gender has been distinctive from the mid-1970s onward. Early Direct- ives were confined narrowly to the equal treatment of women and men as workers in standard forms of employment, but more recently these have been significantly extended so as to embed the rights of worker-careers in employment through the regulation of working time and to regulate nonstandard forms of employment, especially part-time and temporary work. EU policies promote not only the closing of gender gaps in the extent of paid work and level of pay but address gender equality more generally. Some of the wider effects are the result of the growing reach of EU regulation, and some are the result of the interconnectedness of the domains of the gender regime. Nevertheless, there remains much unevenness in the implementation of these policies across EU Member States.
The development of these policies and their implementation depends on a wider context. One part of this political context for gen- der equality is mobilization of support for women, present in numerous locations including a special unit within the commission, women members of the European Parliament, and civil society, especially in trade unions and the European Women’s Lobby. A further part is the successful coordination of gender concerns with a project for con- structing a distinctive form of capitalism that defines social inclusion and full employment as means to develop a globally competitive regional economy. These political projects and institutions articulate with other institutions in the economy and civil society.
As the EU becomes increasingly important through the deepening of its powers, the increasing number of Member States, and increased impact in global governance, this new form of the gender regime grows in importance. What role it plays as a model or con- straint on other, non-Member States remains to be seen.
Last edited by Cludde; Aug 16, 2019 at 08:22 PM.