Enlarging the Club: When do Candidate States Enforce Gender Equality laws?

Abstract

This paper develops a model for explaining levels of government compliance with EU accession requirements on gender equality in the workplace in four post-communist enlargement countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland. Government compliance is understood as a complex two-stage process that consists of legislative and institutional reforms. I argue that government compliance with international requirements is determined by the domestic political system and depends on the configuration of political actors mobilized in support of and in opposition to new policies. In countries where gender equality reforms are not politically and socially contested (Lithuania and the Czech Republic), government compliance depends on the degree of mobilization of women, whether in women's movements or among women parliamentarians. In countries, where counter-movements are strong (Poland and Hungary), the success of government reforms are explained by the mobilization capacities of women's movements and their ability to form coalitions with political actors within government elites, most importantly governing parties. In Poland and Hungary, the effect of women's movements on the implementation of policies on gender equality in the workplace is moderated by the ideology of political parties in power.