Sociopolitical Regulation of the Family-Work Relationship

Abstract

The main objectives of the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (EEC), signed in Rome in 1957, were to promote economic integration, prevent distortion of competition and remove barriers to freedom of movement for goods, services and workers. The section in the EEC Treaty entitled “Social Policy” (Articles 117–28) was intended to bring about the harmonisation of social systems and improve living and working conditions as a support for economic policies. The Treaty made no direct provision for the welfare of families, and rights were afforded to women in their capacity not as mothers but as workers. Article 119 introduced the principle of equal pay for equal work, on the insistence of the French who had written the equality principle into the 1946 constitution and wanted to avoid being put at a competitive disadvantage. Since the mid-1970s a series of directives have been issued aimed at approximating equality laws in member states, and the equal opportunities principle was enshrined in both the 1989 Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers and the Social Protocol appended to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.