The politics of 'mainstreaming' gender equality

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‘Mainstreaming’ or integrating gender equality into policy and practice has become politically fashionable at a variety of levels of governance across Europe. First mooted as an approach to equal opportunities at the United Nations World Conference on Women held in Nairobi in 1985, women’s organisations have put mounting pressure on government institutions to take equal opportunities policies more seriously. This began at a time of increasing concern about a ‘demographic time bomb’ which would mean more use would need to be made of women — the ‘untapped resource’. In the event, the time bomb failed to explode but there has been, nevertheless, growing recognition that women have a more significant role to play in the labour market. They are the majority of the new labour market entrants, the economically inactive, the unemployed and low-skilled (OECD, 1994). Hence the business case for a more effective approach to equality was combined with more vociferous concerns about social justice that equal treatment in the law had failed to remedy. Mainstreaming offered a new, long-term strategic approach to gender equality. It is now the official policy approach of the European Union (EU) (CEC, 1996), the Council of Europe (Council of Europe, 1998), the United Kingdom (UK) government and the devolved governments in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.