ABSTRACT
The European Court of Justice (ECJ; since 2007, the Court of Justice of the European Union—CJEU) has dealt with an impressive number of cases concerning gender equality. 1 Its track record, however, is quite checkered. Some cases count as unquestionable milestones, such as Gabrielle Defrenne v Sabena, 2 where the Court held that the principle of equal pay is indeed binding law and not just a noncommittal maxim, and P v S and Cornwall County Council, 3 which extended the notion of gender well beyond the binary of man and woman. Other cases, by contrast, are regressive and laden with stereotypes, such as Ulrich Hofmann v Barmer Ersatzkasse, 4 with its conventional ideology of motherhood, or Eckhard Kalanke v Freie Hansestadt Bremen, 5 which set a rather narrow precedent in the Court’s approach to quota regulations.
