Gender mainstreaming in European employment policies

Abstract

This article analyzes how gender mainstreaming is discursively redefined in a neoliberal frame within the European Employment Strategy, and looks at the effect of this on employment practices in Germany. The focus of the article is on new governance tools such as the open method of coordination (OMC) in the European employment strategy and the implementation of gender mainstreaming in Germany. From a theoretical perspective, following studies on governmentality, the European integration process, with its new governance tools like the OMC, can be interpreted in a way that changes our perspective on governance. The European integration process can be analyzed as changing and regulating the mechanisms of governance with technologies such as knowledge and economically oriented political benchmarks which reframe gender policies such as gender mainstreaming in an activating and individualizing strategy. In looking at gender mainstreaming, therefore, the article deals with discourses and governmental programs as technologies of power which steer policies and governance mechanisms towards neoliberal rationalities and practices, thus highlighting the governmental technologies used to consolidate neoliberal policies.

Keywords:

• gender mainstreaming
• technologies of government
• governmentality
• European Employment Strategy (EES)
• open method of coordination (OMC)
• Germany

Notes

1. See for further detail on Foucault's late conception of governmentality (Foucault 1991).

2. In the 1980s and the early 1990s the proposed directives on part-time work (1983), parental leave (1984), social security (1989), pensions for widows (1989), pension age (1989), atypical work (1991) among others were rejected (Ostner and Lewis 1995; see also Leyenaar 2004, p. 149 ff).

3. See for a detailed description of all directives installed in the different phases of the integration process which would go beyond the intention of this article until the implementation of gender mainstreaming Ostner and Lewis (1995) and Fuhrmann (2005), who have written extensively on this topic.

4. See, for example, Directive 2000/43/EC on equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin, Directive 2000/78/EC establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation, Directive 2002/73/EC on the implementation of the principle of equal treatment for men and women as regards access to employment, vocational training and promotion, and working conditions, and Directive 2004/113/EC implementing the principle of equal treatment between women and men in the access to and supply of goods and services. http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/ [accessed 12 November 2010].

5. See for example the well known case of Defrenne II vs. Sabena in which the Belgian stewardess Mrs Defrenne went to court against Sabena because they did not employ women over the age of 40 years on flights, but allowed men above this age as stewards on flights (Ostner and Lewis 1995).

6. Hofbauer and Ludwig analyzed main documents of the European Commission concerning social and employment policies such as the following: Community framework strategy on gender equality 2001–2005 (European Commission 2000a), The Social Agenda (European Commission 2000b), and the report on equal opportunities (European Commission 2002), see for more detail Hofbauer and Ludwig (2006).