The economic case for gender equality in the European Union: selling gender equality to decision-makers and neoliberalism to women’s organizations

Dr Anna Elomäki
Postdoctoral researcher
Gender Studies
The Department of History, Philosophy, Culture and Art Studies
University of Helsinki

+358503199432

Keywords: economic case, European Union, gender equality policy, neoliberalism, economic policy

Word count: 7000

Introduction

“Gender equality to boost economic growth by 15% – 45% of GDP” (EC, 2009a).

“More women in top jobs key to economic growth, says EU report” (EC, 2010).

“Progress in gender equality leads to economic growth” (EC, 2012a).

These three headlines from twenty-first century European Commission press releases make the substantive claim that gender equality enhances economic growth and imply that gender equality is worth public discussion because it contributes to economic progress. There is nothing new about the economic framing of gender equality in the policy discourse of the European Union (EU). Feminist scholars have consistently pointed out that genderequality policies have been instrumental to the EU’s economic priorities ever since gender equality entered the European agenda (e.g. Lewis, 2006; Ostner, 2000; Stratigaki, 2004; Young, 2000). However, a close reading of EU gender equality policy documents reveals a recent shift from merely subsuming gender equality under the EU’s economic goals to explicit development and propagation of a market-oriented gender equality discourse, the economic case for gender equality. This shift, which I analyze in this article, is part of a global move whereby international organizations and national women’s policy agencies have turned away from rights-based approaches toward discourses focused on economic growth and efficiency. This growing embrace of market mechanisms and values enhances the congruence of gender equality policy with neoliberal policy agendas and forms of governance. (E.g. Eyben and Napier-Moore, 2009; Kantola and Squires, 2012.)

This article contributes to the literature on European Union gender equality policies and the emerging feminist research on EU economic governance by identifying the key actors and processes behind the escalation of economic arguments for gender equality at the EU level and making visible the gender-biased economic assumptions that underpin EU gender equality policy documents.The research that has addressed the economic framing of gender equalityissues at the EU level has mainly been concerned with its effects on the content and concepts of gender equality policy. I argue, that in addition to asking how economic arguments shape gender equality goals and concepts, it is important to inquire what the claims to gender equality say about the economy. This requires an interdisciplinary approach, which combines a discursive analysis focused on framings (e.g. Lombardo, Meier and Verloo, 2009) and an engagement with feminist economics (e.g. Elson and Catagay, 2000; Maier 2011; Young, 2000).

I analyze the gender equality policy documents and the main economic and employment policy documents of the European institutions from 1980 up until present, focusing on passages that make a link between gender equality and the economy.I pay attention to the type and frequency of the economic arguments for gender equality as well asto the conceptualizations of the relationship between the economy and gender equality. I complement the analysis of policy documents by examining the processes and actors behind the construction of the economic case. To this end, I have identified and analyzed preparatory documents, commissioned studies and other background documents. I will begin by discussing the results and limitations of previous research that has addressed the historic economic framing of EU gender equality policies. Based on an analysis of policy documents and background documents, I trace how the relationship between gender equality and economy has been conceptualized in EU policy documents since the 1980s and how the economic case for gender equalitywas developed during the first decade of the 2000’s. In the second section, I focus on the framework implicit in the economic case andits effects on women’s organizations that feel pressured to adopt the new discourse.

Economic framing of EU gender equality policy

Gender equality discourses both at the national and international levels have undergone significant shifts in the past decades. In the field of international development, the rhetoric of justice and rights, which was prominent after the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995, has been replaced by references to economic efficiency and growth. This is partly due to the efforts of international financial organizations, such as the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, to change the discourse on gender equality by developing market-oriented ways to promote gender equality. These discourses are compatible with neoliberal policy agendas focused on liberalization, competitiveness and growth. (Chant, 2012; Elias, 2013; Elson, 2009; Eyben and Napier-Moore, 2009.) Theprevalence of economic gender equality discourses has been facilitated by new governance technologies, which require translating activities into financial calculation as part of good and efficient government and by the aspirations towards evidence-based policy making (Kantola and Squires, 2012: 386–388).

The European Union gender policies have from the very beginning been subsumed under the logic of the market (e.g., Kantola, 2010; Lewis, 2006; Ostner, 2000). The manner in which equality between women and men entered the European agenda in 1957, when Article 119 on equal pay was included in the Treaty of Rome, is indicative of the economic rationale that has guided the EU’s gender equality policies. The French government, which had already introduced legislation on equal pay, was afraid that countries using low-wage female labor might undermine the competitiveness of the French industry (Kantola, 2010: 27–28). Since the 1950’s gender equality has changed from being a market unifier to a fundamental right enshrined in EU treaties and the scope of the EU’s gender equality policies has extended from employment to issues such as decision-making, reconciliation of work and family life and violence against women. The economic framing has, nevertheless, persisted and even intensified in the 1990s and 2000s.

Research that has addressed the economic framing of EU gender equality policy hasmainly focused on the incorporation of equal opportunities into the European Employment Strategy (EES) as one of its four pillars in the late 1990s. Scholars have argued that the close connection to employment priorities has changed the goals of gender equality policy, making it mainly preoccupied with women’s employment rates (e.g.,Leon, 2009; Lewis, 2006; Smith and Villa, 2010).This instrumental approach has affected the discourse around gender equality. The meanings of originally feminist conceptshave been co-opted. For example, when the issue of reconciliation between work and family was incorporated into the EU’s employment agenda, the concern with changing gender relations within the family was replaced with the goal of increasing women’s participation in the labor market through flexible forms of work (Stratigaki, 2004). In the words of Lombardo, Meier and Verloo (2009), the meaning of gender equality has been bent or shrunk. Furthermore, some have argued that the economic framing has had consequences for the very understanding of “gender”. According to Rönnblom (2009), policy discourses that bend the meaning of gender equality towards economic growth produce a de-politicized understanding of gender in where the conflicting dimension of gender relations is pushed aside.

This literature has mainly been concerned with the effects of the economic framing onthe content and concepts of gender equality policy. In my view, this approach does not fully address the stakes involved in the intensification of market-oriented gender equality discourses, because it implicitly assumes the possibility of a pure gender-equality discourse unaffected by economic concerns. It is crucial to acknowledge, however, that gender equality and economic theories and policies are connected.This connection works in two directions:claims to gender equality shape our understandings of the economy and support certain economic policies, and economic theories and policies embody certain understandings of gender and have impacts on gender equality.

First, Nancy Fraser (2013) has arguedthat feminist claims are fundamentally connected to struggles over the place of the economy and markets in society. Theseclaims are ambivalent as regards both to neoliberalism and its opponents and may side with one or another.Fraser warns that unawareness of feminist struggles being played on the same field as struggles over the economy prevents feminists from seeing the unintended consequences of their claims and renders their claims available for resignification by neoliberal forces.Some feminist ideals have indeed unwittingly converged with neoliberal goals, giving them legitimacy (Eisenstein, 2009; Fraser, 2009). Similarlygender equality policies may implicitly or explicitly support neoliberal economic thinking and policies.

Second, feminist economists have revealed the gender-bias of mainstream economic thinking and policies. On the one hand, the neoclassical economic framework, which underpins the EU’s economic policies, produces a simplified view of human behaviour. The focus on autonomous individuals and rational choice leaves gendered power relations out of view. Unpaid reproductive work is rarely discussed. (E.g., Berik, van der Meulen Rodgers and Seguino, 2009; Braunstein, 2008; Elson, 2009.) On the other hand, macroeconomic policies have major relevance for gender relations (Elson and Catagay, 2000; Maier, 2011). For example, the prioritization of fiscal stability – keeping public debt at bay and cutting public spending – that has been central to the EU’s monetary policy may lead to cuts in public jobs, services and social spending. Thesemeasures tend to affect women more than men, given that women constitute the majority of public sector workers, use more public services and rely more on various social benefits. Cuts in welfare and care services involve the additional risk of reprivatization, because social reproduction and care may be transferred back to the private sphere. (Young, 2000.)

In addition to asking how economic framings shape gender equality goals and concepts, it is, therefore, important pay close attention to the implicit and explicit references to the economy in gender policies and claims to gender equality.Although market-logic has always offered the master-frame for the EU gender equality policies, my analysis of EU policy documents reveals shifts as regards to how the relationship of gender equality and the economy has been conceived.

From economic framing to the economic case

In the early 1980s,references to the economy in EU gender equality policy documents were scarce, and different interpretations of the relationship between gender equality and the economy coexisted. On the one hand, the economy was seen to discriminate against women. The Commission’s first mid-term equal opportunities action programme (1982–1985) emphasized “women’s right to participate in and contribute to the economic life” (CEC, 1981: 4). On the other hand, policy documents of the era reflected member states’ concern with the costs of equal opportunities policies (CEC, 1985: 3; van der Vleuten, 2007). The emergence in the 1980s of the now familiar arguments about the full use of women’s human resources (Council, 1984: 4),women’s labour market participation as a way to tackle demographic challenges (CEC, 1985: 4) and women as a labour market resource (CEC, 1990: 2) can be seen as a way to mitigate this concern.

The idea about the macroeconomic benefits of gender equality, which forms the core of the economic case for gender equality, appeared to EU policy documents in the early 1990s, coinciding with efforts to integrate equal opportunities policy more firmly to the EU’s employment and social policy. The Commission’s third action programme on equal opportunities (1991–1995) stressed that women’s skills and participation are “indispensable for the economic development of Europe” and that equal opportunities policy “forms an essential part of the strategy for Europe’s economic and social cohesion” (CEC, 1990: 2). The Council explicitly pushed for stronger alignment of equal opportunities policies with employment and growth policies and advised the Commission to “take a fresh, closer look at the objective of equality between women and men with an eye to an employment-intensive economic growth strategy”(Council, 1994: 6). The integration of equal opportunities in the European Employment Strategy, launched in 1997, officially recognized gender equality as a matter of economic interest, which also shows in policy documents. For example, the Commission’s first annual report on equality between women and men from the same year described women as a “key factor of growth” (CEC, 1997: 24).

The Commission and the Council began to study the economic benefits of gender equality more closely in the late 1990s as part of the efforts to see social policy as a “productive factor”.In this debate,which challenged the narrow understandings of the economy that had guided the EU’s economic policy, economic, employment and social policy were conceptualized as mutually reinforcing (Rubery, 2005: 5). In this context, the Commission authorized a group of gender experts to gather evidence about the benefits of gender equality to the economy as well as to the quality of life (Rubery et al. 1999). The links between gender equality, economic growth and social policy were further explored in studies (Löfström 2001), conferences and a meeting of government ministers during Sweden’s Presidency of the European Council in 2001. In order to enhance gender mainstreaming, Sweden wanted gender equality “to be viewed as a means of promoting growth and employment and not only from the perspective of the individual” (Swedish Presidency, 2001: 4).

The outcomes of this early EU level discussion on gender equality and economic growth were twofold. On the one hand, the issue of gender equality was translated into the language of economic thinking through the introduction of the language of costs, benefits, investments and productivity to the EU gender equality discourse. On the other hand, the priorities and objectives of the prevailing economic policies were questioned from a gender perspective. For example, Commission’s gender experts emphasized that achieving gender equality required developing “new coherent systems of social and economic organization in the interests of both men and women” and extending the concern with “the narrow focus on growth” to a broader interest in the quality of life and well-being (Rubery et al., 1999: 2-3, 1.)

The critical approach proposed by gender experts did not, however, catch on. Uncritical references to the contribution of gender equality to economic growth proliferated in EU gender equality policy documents in the early 2000s, following the adoption of the Lisbon Strategy with its goals of sustainable economic growth, more and better jobs, and greater social cohesion. The assumed connection between gender equality and economic growth had also benefited gender equality policy: the Lisbon Strategy included targets for female employment and childcare. In 2004, the growth-enhancing potential of gender equality was spelled out at the highest political level, when the leaders of the EU member states acknowledged that gender equality policies were “instruments of social cohesion as well as of growth” (Council, 2004: 8). Affirmations of the intrinsic value of gender equality were from then on dutifully complemented with references to the Lisbon Strategy, in particular to the goal of economic growth. For example, the Commission’s Roadmap for equality between women and men 2006-2010 stressed that “gender equality is a fundamental right, a common value of the EU and a necessary condition for the achievement of the EU objectives of growth, employment and social cohesion” (CEC, 2006: 2).

The European pact for gender equality, adopted by the member statesin 2006, went further in portraying gender equality as a factor in economic growth. The Councilexpressed the rationale behind the Pact solely in economic terms: “Acknowledging that gender equality policies are vital to economic growth, prosperity and competitiveness, the European Council stresses that it is time to make a firm commitment at the European level to implement policies to promote women’s employment and to promote a better work life balance” (Council, 2006: 12). This formulation omits the idea present in the Roadmap that gender equality is valuable in its own right and eliminates references to the social dimension. It reflects the reorganization of the EU’s main policy priorities around the goals of growth and jobs that took place in the middle of the first decade of the 2000s (Hermans, 2005).

The focus on growth increased the pressures to reframe genderequality policy. The explicit development of a new, market-oriented gender equality discourse began in 2008. The rationale of the newdiscourse was outlined in an analysis noteThe economic case for gender equality (Smith and Bettio, 2008) that the Commission requested from its gender experts: “By shifting the discourse around gender equality from a socially worthwhile aim, yet potentially expensive, to an economically productive investment, it is possible to see the equal treatment of women as contributing to economic success” (ibid,: 2). The Swedish Presidency of the Council participated in the development of the new discourse. It commissioned an empirical study on the impact of gender equality on employment and economic growth in the EU (Löfström, 2009) and drafted Council Conclusions (Council, 2009a) on the topic.