Mainstreaming Gender Equality in Europe. a Frame Analysis Approach

Introduction Since Beijing 1995, gender mainstreaming has heralded the beginning of a renewed effort to address what is seen as one of the roots of gender inequality: the genderedness of systems, procedures and organizations. In the definition of the Council of Europe, gender mainstreaming is the (re)organisation, improvement, development and evaluation of policy processes, so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated in all policies at all levels and at all stages, by the actors normally involved in policymaking. All member states and some candidate states of the European Union have started to implement gender mainstreaming. The 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam places equality between women and men among the explicit tasks of the European Union and obliges the EU to promote gender equality in all its tasks and activities. The Gender Mainstreaming approach that has been legitimated by this Treaty is backed by legislation and by positive action in favour of women (or the “under-represented sex”). Gender equality policies have not only been part and parcel of modernising action in the European Union, but can be expected to continue to be so (Rossili 2000). With regard to gender inequality, the EU has both a formal EU problem definition at the present time, and a formalised set of EU strategies. Problems in the implementation of gender equality policies abound, at both national and EU level. To give just one example, it took the Netherlands – usually very supportive of the EU –14 years to implement article 119 on Equal Pay (Van der Vleuten 2001). Moreover, it has been documented that overall EU action has run counter to its goal of gender equality. Overall EU action has weakened women’s social rights more seriously than men’s (Rossili 2000). The introduction of Gender Mainstreaming, the incorporation of gender and women’s concerns in all regular policymaking is meant to address precisely this problem of a contradiction between specific gender policies and regular EU policies. Yet, in the case of the Structural Funds, for instance, Gender Mainstreaming has been used to further reduce existing funds and incentives for gender equality (Rossili 2000). Against this backdrop, this paper will present an approach at studying divergences in policy frames around gender equality as one of the elements connected to implementation problems: the MAGEEQ project.