The Economic Case for Gender Equality

Επιθεώρηση Κοινωνικών Ερευνών, 2016

In the course of history an interesting evolution has taken place in European gender equality policies. This story started in 1957 when the European Economic Community was founded and the principle of equal pay for equal work for men and women was included in the Treaty of Rome to avoid unfair competition and distortions in the free European market. Soon the Treaty article would evolve into a broader demand for equal rights related to work and result in a series of binding directives. In the eighties and nineties gender equality would increasingly enter other policy domains by means of non-binding soft law and gender mainstreaming. More recently, the EU has turned towards an approach of multiple discrimination which involves other grounds of discrimination, such as race and sexuality. The aim of this article is to review the history of gender equality policy in the EU while distinguishing some general trends, and discuss the implications of the most recent turn towards an anti-discrimination framework. I conclude that despite a continuous broadening of policies and strategies, economic motives continue to be the leitmotiv throughout this history. Also the broadening of EU equality policies with regard to the inclusion of multiple inequalities risks being trapped in the same economic logic. Nevertheless, despite the economic framing of EU equality policies, the pluralist and open nature of the EU’s decision-making process still provides gender activists with multiple access points to attempt to re-frame the way in which gender issues are addressed, as the struggle for a gender-just Europe continues.

2021

This article aims to briefly understand and evaluate the main current European provisions for equal pay amongst genders. According to the European statistics compiled in 2012, the average differential in pay between the genders was 16% (in favour of men). In light of this statistic, this article critically analyses the provisions effectiveness at European level for guaranteeing equal pay. This research was carried out through a literature review. This is important to demonstrate, explain, and evaluate the current existent literature about this specific theme covered in this article. Furthermore, the literature review gives accuracy and validation to this research. In conclusion, there is a discussion on the challenges faced by European legislation to reduce unequal wages. The main finding relies on the evidence that women still earn less than men, even working at the same job. However, women had an efficient development over discrimination, offering them women effective legislation,...

2010

Advances in Life Course Research, 2003

This paper describes the legal progress made in European Community law and litigation with regard to women and their problems in labour life. The improvement of European legislation started in the 1970s and was fostered by the European Court of Justice. Gender equality thus was implemented in the legal systems of all the European member states. But the main problem still is translating law into practice. Therefore the top-down strategy of gender mainstreaming and some demands within the new amended "Equal Treatment Directive" (2002/73/EC) could bring further achievements in equality. Structural change, however, is impeded by the background presence of the male breadwinner regime.

Journal of Social Policy, 2004

This article addresses some implications for gender equality and gender policy at European and national levels of transformations in family, economy and polity, which challenge gender regimes across Europe. Women's labour market participation in the west and the collapse of communism in the east have undermined the systems and assumptions of western male breadwinner and dual worker models of central and eastern Europe. Political reworking of the work/welfare relationship into active welfare has individualised responsibility. Individualisation is a key trend west − and in some respects east − and challenges the structures that supported care in state and family. The links that joined men to women, cash to care, incomes to carers have all been fractured. The article will argue that care work and unpaid care workers are both casualties of these developments. Social, political and economic changes have not been matched by the development of new gender models at the national level. And while EU gender policy has been admired as the most innovative aspect of its social policy, gender equality is far from achieved: women's incomes across Europe are well below men's; policies for supporting unpaid care work have developed modestly compared with labour market activation policies. Enlargement brings new challenges as it draws together gender regimes with contrasting histories and trajectories. The article will map social policies for gender equality across the key elements of gender regimes-paid work, care work, income, time and voice-and discuss the nature of a model of gender equality that would bring gender equality across these. It analyses ideas about a dual earner-dual carer model, in the Dutch combination scenario and 'universal caregiver' models, at household and civil society levels. These offer a starting point for a model in which paid and unpaid work are equally valued and equally shared between men and women, but we argue that a citizenship model, in which paid and unpaid work obligations are underpinned by social rights, is more likely to achieve gender equality.

UTMS Journal of Economics, 2018

After the World War II, especially in the early fifties there is an expansion of gender rights. Women are massively employed all over the world in all sectors of social life, contributing to an increase in both their own standard of living and the standard in their own countries. As the importance and role of women grows, this is achieved with increasing respect for its rights. Gender means elimination of inequality and promote equality between women and men in all areas of social life. If we want to achieve gender equality as a whole, it is inevitable to achieve an economic consolidation of the two sexes. Economic strengthening is possible trough equal pay. Experience shows that payments are not equal when it comes to wages for men and women. Therefore, the EU is constantly working to regulate this area, with special regulations, which are mandatory for the member states, but should also be respected by countries that would like to join the union. This led to the promotion of gende...

Industrial Relations Journal, 2010

This article analyses the changing position of gender in the European Employment Strategy (EES) since its 2005 relaunch. Overall, we find a picture of mixed progress towards gender equality goals across Member States. There is evidence of the EU soft law approach leading to positive developments as the use of targets in conjunction with Country-Specific Recommendations and Points-to-Watch have had some influence in promoting gender equality policies among Member States. However, the weakened position of gender mainstreaming in European-level initiatives has led to gender being marginalised or ignored in national and EU policy responses to the crisis. The prominence of gender has declined further in the 2010 revision of the EES under the 2020 banner. This introduces new risks as the emphasis on gender equality falls further down the list of priorities in the streamlining of the Lisbon Process.