Spreading the word across Europe

Abstract

The implications of the integration of the gender mainstreaming strategy into the European Employment Strategy (EES) for social relations and regulation of gender relations at the national level are analysed since 1997 in both EU member states and non-member states. Our aim is to identify the extent to which the EU is able to use the EES as a discursive tool to shape political struggles and political processes at the national level. We also highlight the regulation of gender relations at the EU level and the national level through the identification of how gender problems, measures to solve these problems and the goal of gender equality are constructed or framed. The interests of different groups of men and women are inadequately represented in the EES and gender equality is perceived more as a derived objective of economic growth rather than a question of social justice.

Keywords:

• gender mainstreaming
• EU
• employment policies
• actors
• gender equality

Notes

1 The name of the project is ‘From Welfare to Knowfare. A European Approach to Employment and Gender Mainstreaming in the Knowledge Based Society Society’. Available at http://www.bifrost.is/wellknow. The project has received funding during the period 2003–2005 from the EU's fifth framework programme as a part of: Improving the Human Research Potential and the Socio-economic Knowledge Base.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lilja Mósesdóttir

E-mail: [email protected]

Rósa G. Erlingsdóttir

E-mail: [email protected]/[email protected]