Beyond the ‘worlds of compliance’: a sociological and discursive approach to the Europeanisation of gender equality policies

First draft, comments welcome, please contact authors before quoting the paper Drawing on the analysis of gender equality policies in Europe carried out within the QUING project, the volume that this chapter introduces aims at contributing to the literature discussing Europeanisation and the comparative analysis of public policies in a gendered perspective. This general purpose makes necessary to clarify various concepts and to set-up the common theoretical and methodological background of the contributions. This introductory chapter has two main aims. The first is to isolate a few research directions, making explicit references to the most recent developments of the literature on European integration and domestic policy changes in Europe. The second aim is to discuss theoretical and methodological aspects of the discursive politics approach that we employ in the volume for our analysis of the Europeanisation of gender and other inequality policies. By articulating a sociological and discursive approach to Europeanisation, this chapter expects not only to introduce the main empirical findings detailed in the other chapters, but also to develop a more comprehensive approach in the analysis of the “external ” variable in the making of gender equality policies in Europe, thus contributing to the overall debate on the Europeanisation of public policies