ABSTRACT
During the last decade of the twentieth century, gender mainstreaming emerged rapidly and spread throughout the world as a new policy approach/ tool aiming to combat gender inequalities. Gender mainstreaming is defi ned as an innovative strategy that requires a radical redefi nition of political and policy values and the insertion of gender equality as a fundamental goal in all polices. The European Union (EU) has become a leading actor in the development of gender mainstreaming as a new policy approach. However, as the EU is primarily an economic body, its gender equality policy was originally shaped within the framework of employment, extending to other gender equality issues only consequentially (Walby 2004; Morgan 2008; Zippel 2008). The recognition that gender inequalities falling outside the employment context also affect the employability of women and the competitiveness of national economies has pushed the EU to expand its regulations into the area of social policy in order to be able to benchmark the divergent labor market and social policies of the member states.
