The Europeanization of Gender Equality Policies: A Discursive-Sociological Approach (Gender and Politics)

A discursive-sociological approach to the Europeanization of gender and other equality policies. Using largely unpublished empirical data covering twenty-nine European countries this book adopts a pluralistic perspective to explore the complex and often divergent gender and other equality policy outputs of Europeanization. EU member states and candidate countries are increasingly exposed to the domestic impact of EU regulations, policy instruments, and discourses in the fields of gender equality and antidiscrimination. This impact not only affects national or subnational legislations and equality machineries, but also the framing and the wording of these policies, providing domestic actors with new resources and opportunity structures. This book explores the divergent policy outputs in the member states as regards the making of gender and other equalities, bringing together the most recent insights from Europeanization and gender scholars from a discursive-sociological perspective. Using largely unpublished empirical data, the book addresses policy issues ranging from gender violence to reconciliation and antidiscrimination policies, through case studies and comparisons covering up to 29 European countries. The result is a book that provides us with a more realistic and complex picture of Europeanization processes Front Matter....Pages i-xix The Europeanization of Gender Equality Policies: A Discursive-Sociological Approach....Pages 1-27 ‘Going Soft’? Analysing the Contribution of Soft and Hard Measures in EU Gender Law and Policy....Pages 28-48 Meanings and Uses of Europe in Making Policies against Domestic Violence in Central and Eastern Europe....Pages 49-74 Changing French Reconciliation Policies and the Usages of Europe: Reluctant Europeanization....Pages 75-98 Using the EU to Promote Gender Equality Policy in a Traditional Context: Reconciliation of Work and Family Life in Italy....Pages 99-120 Comparing the Europeanization of Multiple Inequalities in Southern Europe: A Discursive-Institutionalist Analysis....Pages 121-144 Swimming against the Tide: Contested Norms and Antidiscrimination Advocacy in Central and Eastern Europe....Pages 145-167 Use of the Europeanization Frame in Same-Sex Partnership Issues across Europe....Pages 168-191 Is Gender Equality Soluble into Self-Governance? Regionalizing and Europeanizing Gender Policies in Spain....Pages 192-213 Prospects and Challenges for Discursive-Sociological Studies of the Europeanization of Equality Policies....Pages 214-236 Back Matter....Pages 237-242 Introduction: Democracy, gender and citizenship in post-communist Russia part 1. Discourses of the early transition: liberalism, feminism, and the market in the 1990s. Welfare and social justice in the USSR's final years Liberalism and social reform in the early transition Gender equality, individual empowerment, and pluralism part 2. Opposition politics, nationalism, and the search for authenticity, 1995-2004. Social welfare in the mid-transition, 1995-2000 The debate on public morality The rediscovery of the child part 3. Statism and democratic reversal under Putin: policies for a wayward society, 2000-2008. Introduction to part 3 Pronatalism and family politics under Putin's presidency Gender and the state in debates on conscription part 4. Steps towards a post-Putin social contract. Introduction to part 4: the wayward society reaches maturity Social justice and social inclusion, 2005-2011 Conclusion. Through compelling and insightful analysis of the Russian case, this book explores the role that social welfare plays in regime transitions. It examines the role that gender and social welfare has played in Russia's post-communist political evolution from Yeltsin's assumption of the presidency to Putin's return for a third term as president in 2012 This book analyses the diffusion of norms concerning gender-based violence and gender mainstreaming of aid and trade between the EU, South America and Southern Africa. Norm diffusion is conceptualized as a truly multidirectional and polycentric process, shaped by regional governance and resulting in new geometries of transnational activism. An exploration of the ways that multiple inequalities are being addressed in Europe. Using country-based and region-specific case studies it provides an innovative comparative analysis of the multidimensional equality regimes that are emerging in Europe, and reveals the potential that these have for institutionalizing intersectionality