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Gender issues in international relations: the case of the European Community*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Catherine Hoskyns
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Extract

This article takes a concern with gender as the starting point for looking at some of the political processes and structures that have grown up within the European Community. Such an approach reveals new contours to the EC system and throws a fresh light on features hitherto regarded as ‘normal’. Though the focus is on the EC, it is argued that the results of an analysis of this kind have a wider significance. Thus the article is intended as a contribution to the growing engagement between ‘women's politics’ in its broadest sense and the theory and practice of international relations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , July 1994 , pp. 225 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1994

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References

1 Walker, R. B. J., ‘Gender and Critique in the Theory of International Relations’, in Gendered States, ed. Peterson, V. S. (Boulder and London, 1992) pp. 179–202Google Scholar.

2 Article 119 commits member states of the EC to ensure the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work. It was included in the Treaty of Rome at th e insistence of the French who feared that their recently adopted equal pay legislation might put them at an economic disadvantage. From this firm position in the Treaty, a much more extensive policy has gradually been developed mainly as a result of women's activism and commitment.

3 Weiler, J., ‘The Community System: the Dual Character of Supranationalism’, Yearbook of European Law, 1 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 As reported in the Financial Times, 10 November 1992.

5 For the development of this policy, see Hoskyns, C., ‘Women's Equality and the European Community’, Feminist Review, 20 (1985), pp. 71–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buckley, M., Anderson, M. (eds.), Women, Equality and Europe (London, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pillinger, J., Feminising the Market—Women's Pay and Employment in the European Community (London, 1992)Google Scholar.

6 Byre, A., Leading Cases and Materials on the Social Policy of the EEC (Deventer, 1989)Google Scholar.

7 For a gender analysis of the public/private divide in political theory, see Coole, D., Women in Political Theory, 2nd edn (London, 1993)Google Scholar.

8 A good account of the pitfalls inherent in these two options is given in MacKinnon, C. A., Feminism Unmodified—Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA, 1987), pp. 32–45Google Scholar.

9 C. Bacchi, ‘Do Women Need Equal Treatment or Different Treatment?’ Paper for International Political Science Association Congress, Buenos Aires (1991). For the evidence from which these arguments are drawn, see Bacchi, C., Same Difference—Feminism and Sexual Difference (Sydney, 1990).Google Scholar

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11 Case 170/84; ECJ judgement 13 May 1986.

12 Jeanne Gregory, however, has argued that the Bilka judgement, while helpful in imposing stricter standards on employers in cases of indirect discrimination, has also had the effect of endorsing a ‘market forces’ defence, if this can be argued within the limits set. Gregory, J., ‘Equal Value/Comparable Worth: National Statutes and Case Law in Britain and USA’, in Kahn, P. and Meehan, E. (eds.), Equal Value/Comparable Worth in the UK and the USA (London, 1992), p. 50Google Scholar.

13 Dickens, L., Whose Flexibility? Discrimination and Equality Issues in Atypical Work (Warwick, 1991)Google Scholar.

14 Case C-177/88; ECJ judgement 8 Nov. 1990.

15 Case C-179/88; EC J judgement 8 Nov. 1990. In this case the ECJ made clear that that the absolute protection of the pregnant woman lasted from the time her pregnancy became known till the end of her maternity leave. Periods of sickness after this, even if pregnancy related, would be subject to normal sick leave provisions.

16 Webb v EMO Air Cargo (UK) Ltd.; ruling House of Lords 26 Nov. 1992; ECJ Case C-32/93. This case concerns a somewhat similar situation to that in Dekker, where a replacement for a person on maternity leave found herself to be pregnant soon after starting work, and was then dismissed. In the light of Dekker, the House of Lords substantially altered the approach taken previously by the Court of Appeal. A ‘Dekker’ approach has now been incorporated into the sections on pregnancy of the new Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Bill, thus considerably extending the protection of pregnant workers in the UK.

17 Council Directive 92/85/EEC, 19 Oct. 1992.

18 Fredman notes in general the contradiction between the rapid development of the law on sex discrimination and ‘the stubborn persistence of disadvantage’. In this situation, EC law for women appears as ‘a small but important oasis’. However, she sees the concepts upon which it is based as flawed, and points up the extent to which in practice the ECJ's concern for justice is diluted as a result of its sensitivity to the perceived needs of markets, governments and employers. This produces ‘equality within a market order’. Fredman, ‘European Community Discrimination Law, pp. 119–35.

19 Case C-262/88; ECJ judgement 17 May 1990.

20 This was clearly argued in Acterberg-Te Riele v Social Verzekeringsbank Case-48/88; ECJ judgement 27 June 1989.

21 For more detail on these events see Wandor, M. (ed.), The Body Politic—Women's Liberation in Britain 1969–1972 (London, 1972) pp. 249–260Google Scholar; Levine, J.Sisters (Dublin, 1982)Google Scholar; Cantarow, E., ‘Abortion and Feminism in Italy’, Radical America, 10 (1977)Google Scholar.

22 Rowbotham, S., The Past Is Before Us—Feminism in Action since the 1960s (London, 1989).Google Scholar

23 For an overview of these developments see Lovenduski, J., Women and European Politics (London, 1986)Google Scholar and Kaplan, G., Contemporary West European Feminism (London, 1992).Google Scholar

24 Haug, F., ‘Lessons from the Women's Movement in Europe’, Feminist Review, 31 (1989), pp. 107–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 See Katzenstein, M. and Mueller, C. (eds.), The Women's Movements of the US and Western Europe (Philadelphia, 1987)Google Scholar and Ryan, B., Feminism and the Women's Movement (New York/ London, 1992)Google Scholar.

26 Kaplan, Contemporary Western European Feminism.

27 For a detailed examination of the effects of such assumptions in the European Commission of the eighties, see M. Chalude, R. Chater and J. Laufer, Equal Opportunities in the Commission of the European Communities Oct 1986 (COPEC {87} 256).

28 Smart, C., The Ties that Bind—Law, Marriage and the Reproduction of Patriarchal Relations (London, 1984)Google Scholar.

29 Gelb, J. and Palley, M. L., Women and Public Policies (Princeton, 1987)Google Scholar.

30 Jones, K. B., Compassionate Authority—Democracy and the Representation of Women (New York/London, 1993).Google Scholar

31 See note 5.

32 Castle, B., The Castle Diaries 1974–76 (London, 1980) pp. 418–20Google Scholar.

33 The sixteen volumes are usefully summarized in Cecchini, P., The European Challenge—1992 and the Benefits of a Single Market (Aldershot, 1988).Google Scholar

34 Commission of the European Communities, Equal Opportunities for Women and Men (Third Action Programme) COM (90) 449.

35 Peterson, V. S. (ed.), Gendered States—Feminist (Re) Visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder and London, 1992)Google Scholar.

36 See note 3.

37 See, for example, Sylvester, C., ‘The Emperors’ Theories and Transformations: Looking at the Field Through Feminist Lenses’, in Pirages, D. and Sylvester, C. (eds.), Transformations in the Global Political Economy (London, 1990), pp. 230–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Brenner, J., ‘US Feminism in the Nineties’, New Left Review (1993), pp. 101–59Google Scholar.

39 These points are helpfully discussed in Flax, J., Thinking Fragments—Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West (Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar and Barrett, M. and Phillips, A. (eds.), Destabilizing Theory—Contemporary Feminist Debates (London, 1992)Google Scholar.

40 For an excellent analysis of both the contents of the Maastricht Treaty and the mechanisms used to negotiate it, see Curtin, D., ‘The Constitutional Structure of the Union: A Europe of Bits and Pieces’, Common Market Law Review, 30 (1993), pp. 17–69Google Scholar.