Introduction: Challenges to European Union Gender Equality Policies

Abstract

Gender equality policies in the European Union (EU) have, from the adoption of the equal-pay principle in the 1957 Treaty of Rome up until the late 1980s, mainly focused on equal treatment in the employment field. In the 1980s and especially in the 1990s measures of positive action and equal opportunities were increasingly introduced in the soft law policies of the Union.1 In this way a dual-track strategy emerged, combining formal equality before the law (equal treatment and women’s rights) with substantive equality of outcome (positive action and gender equality) (Hoskyns 1996; Kantola 2010; Lombardo 2003; Lombardo and Meier 2007; Rees 1998; Stratigaki 2005).2 However, in the mid- and late 1990s, the limited impact of both equal treatment and positive action led to the introduction of a third gender equality strategy, namely gender mainstreaming (Squires 2007). All policies at all levels should take into account gender equality concerns and the potentially gendered impact of their adoption. This was a way of directing attention toward structural and systemic dimensions of gender inequality, and at the same time the strategy broadened the scope of EU gender equality policies to areas outside employment (Kantola 2010; Lombardo 2003; Lombardo and Meier 2007; Stratigaki 2005).3