ABSTRACT
Women are key figures in the struggles over flexibility. This chapter demonstrates this by describing the way debates on flexibility are often inappropriately argued in terms of ungendered categories of class, capital, employers and employees, thus missing key dimensions in which the restructuring of gender relations play a vital role. The issues of class and gender are intertwined even though they require an analysis which does not conflate one with the other. In recent years there has been a major change in the gender regime. Overt attempts to restrict women’s employment are now infrequent and illegal, while attempts to restrict women to the private sphere of the home are rare. Increased integration, and a more common regulatory framework for working conditions, is thus likely to impact to some extent on the nature of gender relations in member states, despite divergent national policies.
