ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the concept of social identity and relate it to the construction of social roles in the public and private spheres, and to symbolic representation and the construction of social identities. It analyses gender equality policies on the organisation of labour and family life and other care issues in the European Union (EU), focusing on the construction of social roles in tax and benefit policies, care and domestic work, and reconciliation of work and family life. The chapter elaborates how this example of the construction of social roles in the EU illustrates the construction of social identities and contributes to the symbolic representation of gender. Gender equality policy discourses maintain traditional social roles that attribute the private sphere's main domestic and care role to women and the public sphere's main productive role to men. Governments adopt traditional policies on the gendered social roles in the labour market and within families for various reasons: welfare-state principles, economic crisis.
