ABSTRACT
This chapter describes 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 debate on flexibility is often conducted with an inappropriate neglect of gender issues, treating it as a class-based phenomenon, as part of the changing relations between employers and employees. The situation is one of a mutual impact of gender and class relations, rather than one in which class determines gender. The economic policies of the EU are currently gendered. This gendering is not restricted to policies which regulate equal opportunities in employment, and to policies which attempt to facilitate the reconciliation of working and family life. Any policies to regulate the conditions of employment are automatically gendered if they emerge in a context in which access to differently regulated work is already unevenly distributed between men and women.
