Equal opportunity for women and men and the employment policy of the EU - a critical review of the European Union's approach

At the Essen Summit the promotion of equality of opportunity for men and women was identified alongside the fight against unemployment as the paramount tasks of the European Union and its member states. According equal priority to equal treatment and combating unemployment should in principle do much to raise awareness of equality issues in discussions of labour market policies and labour market analysis. Higher employment rates and reduced unemployment, the objectives reaffirmed by the Essen summit, are essential for progress to be made towards equal treatment. However, equality of priority also implies recognising the potential contradictions between specific policies which may be advocated in the name of reducing unemployment on the one hand, with the objective of increasing gender equality on the other. Our article is organised as follows: in the first section we discuss the analysis of the employment problems faced by the EU and develop the argument, why the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment failed to identify the interaction between gender equality and employment. In the second section we discuss how a "gender perspective" could help to sharpen and inform the analysis, not only of the White paper, but of policy making as well. To illustrate our arguments, we concentrate on three aspects of future labour market and employment developments: the working time issue, job creation in service sector industries and the development of training and further training. In the third section we discuss the necessity of an integrated policy approach towards equal opportunity and employment policy.