Gender Equality as Investment: EU Work-Life Balance Measures and the Neoliberal Shift

77 Pages Posted: 27 Apr 2020

See all articles by Ivana Isailović

Ivana Isailović

University of Amsterdam - Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance

Date Written: January 21, 2020

Abstract

The EU is often seen as one of the most progressive political organizations regarding gender equality, particularly in terms of work-life balance measures. These measures enable parents — especially women, who are predominantly primary caregivers — to reconcile their working and caregiving responsibilities. Since the 1970s, the EU has adopted a wide array of legislative measures and policies to tackle these conflicts, inspired to a large extent by feminist activists’ and authors’ concerns.

Over the past twenty years, however, these measures — which were originally influenced by gender justice imperatives — have become part of the neoliberal shift that is currently underway in Europe, and have promoted it. In this context, the article argues, they risk having a classist effect, privileging highly skilled, high-paid workers to the detriment of more economically vulnerable women.

Drawing on political economy and EU and gender studies scholarship, the article traces these evolutions. The first part describes how these measures originated in the EU social agenda of the 1970s, and how they subsequently became part of a flourishing gender equality agenda in the 1990s. The second part examines how, starting in the 2000s, these measures became framed as ‘social investments in human capital,’ labor supply instruments, whose goal was to retain highly skilled female workers in the workforce. In parallel to that change, the economic model of the EU became more explicitly neoliberal. After the financial and sovereign debt crisis in 2008/09, the EU embraced labor flexibilization and austerity measures, while it acquired more powers to effectively monitor member states’ fiscal and social policies. The final part describes why these measures will likely have a classist effect and will not deliver gender equality for all women, while also evaluating feminist ideas’ relationship with the transnational triumph of neoliberalism, which the situation in the EU illustrates.

Suggested Citation

Isailović, Ivana, Gender Equality as Investment: EU Work-Life Balance Measures and the Neoliberal Shift (January 21, 2020). Yale Journal of International Law, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3523289

Ivana Isailović (Contact Author)

University of Amsterdam - Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance ( email )

P.O.Box 1030
Amsterdam, 1000 BA
Netherlands

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