“EU Equal Opportunities Policy: Towards a Broader Agenda?”

In Part I, I explain the various specific, positive actions adopted on behalf of women by the European Union in the 1990s, focusing in particular on the EU’s period Action Programmes; on the debate over “positive discrimination” after the Court of Justice’s Kalanke and Marschall decisions; and on the new actions taken on women’s issues under the EU’s new Justice and Home Affairs Pillar. In Part II, I introduce the concept of gender mainstreaming, and trace its adoption, and the brief record of implementation, in EU policymaking. In Part III, finally, I conclude the paper with a mixed assessment, namely that the EU has proven capable of addressing a broader women’s rights agenda than feminist theorists have generally argued; but also that, at this writing, the majority of actions undertaken in these areas have taken the form of exhortation, modest financial incentives, and soft law, and that the effects of these new actions on ordinary European women are likely to be felt slowly and unevenly across the member states in the years to come