Gender mainstreaming and the framing of women's rights in Europe: The contribution of the Council of Europe

Drawing on published materials from the Committee of Ministers, Assembly and expert working groups of the Council of Europe, this paper investigates the distinctive contribution made to the framing of women's rights over the last two decades by this regional organisation, which recent studies of the `Europeanisation' of public policies have largely neglected. Elements of congruence are identified between the major mobilising themes of second wave feminism and the Council's emphasis on protecting individual rights, and its sensitivity to the incompleteness and shortcomings of `actually existing' democratic institutions and practices. The relative openness of its agenda-setting processes is also underlined. The Council's flag ship policies for women are shown to have centred since the mid-1980s on a `politics of presence' frame and the (contested) concept of `parity democracy', and the tensions between these and the more recent turn to gender mainstreaming are explored. But the paper also points to the Council's role in diffusing into the E.U. governance arena women's claims to equal participation and presence in the policy process, and notes recent French and U.K. legislation as testifying to the continuing salience of these claims at the national level.     

Europeanising Gender Mainstreaming: Constraints and Opportunities in the Multilevel Euro-polity

What are the conditions for empowering `gender mainstreaming' as a new policy frame beyond the supranational level in member states and regions of the European Union? This paper is premised on the following assumptions: that mainstreaming will reduce gender disparities in Europe only if it takes root at all levels of decision-making, but that some national gender regimes can be expected to resist mainstreaming more than others, especially because it does not command `hard' legal tools. The puzzle to be examined is how mainstreaming can become effective across the European multilevel polity. It is argued that vis-à-visthe resistance of domestic gender regimes, the Europeanisation of equal treatment norms in national, regional and local contexts over the past decades has generated a variety of mechanisms for the cross-border diffusion of new policy ideas that can help to promote mainstreaming. Drawing on comparative Europeanisation research, this argument is developed in three steps. First, the past performance of member states in the implementation of E.U. gender directives is explored, to identify patterns and dynamics and classify leaders and laggards. Second, current mainstreaming experiences in one of the most conspicuous laggard states – Germany – are examined closely. Finally, as a means of explaining the rather intense engagement of German federal and regional governments with mainstreaming, two factors are highlighted: elite learning, and new governance instruments developed by the E.U. Notwithstanding the steps taken to promote mainstreaming, the prospects for further institutionalization within the E.U. appear contingent on the outcome of the Convention on the Future of the Union and the Intergovernmental Conference planned for 2004, since the invigorating of the subsidiarity principle and the division of competences across the multilevel polity are key issues of debate. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The European Union and gender mainstreaming: Constitutionally embedded or comprehensively marginalised?

This paper examines the extent to which gender mainstreaming is constitutionally embedded in the legal framework of the European Union. Within the framework of that broad question it examines three sub-questions concerning the robustness and constitutionalised nature of the E.U.'s `equality regime', the extent of adaptation to mainstreaming methodologies by supranational institutions such as the Court of Justice, and the extent of the gender dimension in the debates which are shaping the future of the European Union, especially the 2002–3Convention on the Future of the Union and the Commission's Governance White Paper of 2001.The E.U. is analysed in this article as an emergent, non-state, postnational constitutionalised polity. The first section presents this perspective, and the succeeding three sections engage with the three` sub-questions' outlined above. The conclusion suggests that as yet, while gender concerns maybe constitutionally embedded in the Treatyframe work, they are less prominent in the constitutional politics of the Convention and the Governance White Paper. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Gender Mainstreaming and Global Governance

This article seeks to explain the variable implementation of gender mainstreaming as a `policy frame' over time and across various international organisations (I.O.s). In the years since the U.N. Fourth World Women's Conference in Beijing (1995),mainstreaming has been endorsed and adopted by a wide range of international organisations, and we compare the adoption and implementation of mainstreaming in four specific I.O.s: the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the European Union. The rhetorical acceptance of mainstreaming by various international organisations, however, obscures considerable variation in both the timing and the nature of the mainstreaming process within and among organisations. This variation, in turn, can be explained in terms of the categories of political opportunity, mobilising structures and strategic framing, which have been put forward by social movement theorists. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Parity,Power and Representative Politics: The Elusive Pursuit of Gender Equality in Europe

In recent years the concept of parity democracy has rapidly risen up the European political agenda. Using a threefold typology of sex-quotas, this article undertakes a classification of the measures taken by the 15 old E.U. member states to improve the gender balance in representative assemblies. This is then used as the basis for an exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of the parity approach as a tool to promote gender equality, including the constitutional obstacles which stand in its way. The article goes on to present a comparative study of several national systems in which attempts to achieve parity democracy have been pursued, concluding that, in order to maximise their effectiveness, parity measures must operate within a system of unbiased political structures and be properly adjusted to suit the particularities of individual national electoral regimes.     

Promotion of Gender Equality at the Workplace: Gender Mainstreaming and Collective Bargaining in Italy

The article examines gender equality in collective bargaining and looks at the extent to which gender and equal opportunities issues have been mainstreamed in industrial relations systems in Italy where, despite the existence of old and new legislation on gender equality, there are persistently low levels of female employment and the precarious workforce is made up predominantly of women. The central question addressed in the article is whether the injection of a gender mainstreaming approach in the Italian collective bargaining system, combined with legislative measures, may improve the situation of women in the context of both public and private spheres. In particular, the article looks at whether gender mainstreaming has the potential to pave the way towards an ethos of substantive equality at the workplace, whereby women enter the workforce on equal terms and men are in a position to share the dual responsibilities of paid and unpaid work. The article maintains that gender mainstreaming may fulfil its transformative potential as a catalyst for changing both the conceptual and analytical tools which the law deploys, provided it is envisaged as a three-fold strategy involving simultaneous processes of deconstruction, replacement and inclusive measures, together with deliberative forms of democracy and the imposition of a statutory positive duty on public authorities to mainstream equality.

Liberal family law in the making: Nordic and European harmonisation

This paper discusses the past and contemporary legal harmonisation exercises of family law in the Nordic countries and Europe. The critique is that the harmonised ‹European family law’ only entrenches the status quo and reiterates traditional family patterns, the male norm, heteronormativity, and a public/private divide represented in the neutral guise of a liberal rights discourse. Furthermore, the critics point out that the political economy of legal harmonisation is, to a large extent, ignored. In the Nordic countries, egalitarianism and broad political deliberation characterised much of the previous legal harmonisation, whereas rights discourse in its liberal sense is a novelty, more or less triggered by the European integration. This paper discusses the gendered implications of the emerging rights discourse in the Nordic countries and the linkages between family law, the labour market and social welfare. The paper argues that the harmonisation exercise cannot be regarded as one consisting only of legal norms and reasoning, but rather it should be discussed from the perspective of a political and epistemological challenge to the prevailing ‹truths’ about marriage, family and sexuality.     

The Role of Sense of School Belonging and Gender in the Academic Adjustment of Latino Adolescents

The aim of this study was to examine the roles of sense of belonging and gender in the academic outcomes of urban, Latino adolescents. It was expected that sense of belonging would play a different role in males' and females' academic adjustment. Participants (N = 143) included mostly Mexican and Puerto Rican seniors from a large, urban high school. The academic outcomes assessed were grade point average, absenteeism, motivation, effort, and educational aspirations and expectations. As hypothesized, females consistently had more positive academic outcomes than males. Sense of school belonging significantly predicted academic outcomes, including academic motivation, effort, and absenteeism. Regression analyses did not show that gender explained differences in the relationship between sense of belonging and academic outcomes. Implications and future directions for research on urban Latino males and females are discussed.     

英国劳动关系的调整路径及其对中国的借鉴意义

英国劳动关系的发展与英国政治、经济的变化紧密相联.伴随着英国工会政治地位的下降、产业结构的调整以及劳动力市场灵活性的增强,英国劳动关系经历了从自主、对抗到合作的曲折历程.相对于劳动关系的变化,英国劳动关系的调整总体上保持了自愿主义的传统特征,但是政府的作用正在逐步增强,建立了一套较为规范的法律制度体系.英国劳动关系的调整路径对我国建立和完善劳动关系调整制度具有诸多借鉴意义.     

Breaking the Silence: Gender Mainstreaming and the Composition of the European Court of Justice

Why has it taken so long for member states to appoint women to the Court of Justice? Despite having won relatively significant policy instruments for equal treatment at work and high levels of legislative representation, women in the European Union have been slow to extend the demand for gender mainstreaming to courts. Prior to 1999, the Court of Justice had had one woman member until Ireland appointed Fidelma Macken in late 1999, and Germany appointed Ninon Colneric and Austria appointed Christine Stix-Hackl Advocate General in 2000.The 1995 U.N. meeting in Beijing was a catalyst for the demand for balanced participation of women and men in decision-making processes within the E.U., and it coincided with Sweden, Finland and Austria joining and championing the cause of gender equality. In 1999, the Commission published a report on women in the judiciary and women lawyers began to organize across Europe. After tracing the appointment process, I review the European Parliament's role in championing women on the Court and consider recent developments. Courts, particularly supranational and federal courts, are representative institutions even if their representative function differs from legislatures. Non-merit factors have always been a factor in judicial appointments and thus the demand for women on the bench is not a terrible deviation from merit. An all male bench is no longer legitimate. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

破产法与破产企业职工权益保障

破产企业职工的权益保护是我国破产法律制度的一项重要内容。本文结合我国企业破产法的有关最新规定,从破产债权、非破产财产、清偿顺序、试点城市国有企业与一般国有企业破产的区别等方面对破产企业职工保护的若干法律规定进行了研究和阐述。     

关于职工董事监事身份的理论思考

本文旨在通过对职工董事监事身份及其身份的产权基础、利益基础、法律基础的理论研究 ,论证职工董事、监事的双重身份。为职工董事、监事制度的建立寻找理论根据 ,更好地发挥职工董事、监事的作用。     

中国人力资本投资状况及其政策选择

人力资本投资状况对我国经济发展和劳动者个人收入水平有着至关重要的影响。虽然我国对人力资本的投资总量在逐年增长,但我国的人力资本投资支出还远远低于各国平均数,与物质资本投资相比较,人力资本投资的相对量还处于较低水平,投资结构也不尽合理。     

Looking back to see forward: the legal niceties of land theft in land rushes

This paper aims to make a modest contribution to an overdue need to locate the current land rush in its historical context, less as a new phenomenon than as a surge in the continuing capture of ordinary people's rights and assets by capital-led and class-creating social transformation. It aims to do so by looking back to earlier land rushes, and particularly to those which have bearing upon sub-Saharan Africa, the site of most large-scale involuntary land loss today. In particular, the paper focuses upon a central tool of land rushes, property law. The core argument made is that land rushes past and present have relied upon legal manipulations which deny that local indigenous (‘customary’) tenures deliver property rights, thereby legalizing the theft of the lands of the poor or subject peoples. Even prior to capitalist transformation this feudal-derived machination was an instrument of aligned class privilege and power, later elaborated to justify mass land and resource capture through colonialism. Now it is routinely embedded in the legal canons of elite-aligned agrarian governance as the means of retaining control over the land resources which rural communities presume are their own.     

工人阶级内部结构的变化与劳动关系矛盾的协调

改革开放以来,我国工人阶级的内部结构发生了很大变化,出现了不同的利益群体,劳动关系矛盾日渐突出。工会应协调劳动关系,重点维护普通工人群体的合法权益。     

The legacy of social conflicts over property rights in rural Brazil and Mexico: Current land struggles in historical perspective

This article proposes an approach to the agrarian question that focuses on the establishment of absolute private property rights over land in Brazil and Mexico. The author argues that current land struggles are conditioned by the property regimes inherited from past struggles. The author examines the liberal reforms of the nineteenth century and argues that the balance of class forces led to the slow establishment of absolute private property in Brazil, while in Mexico they triggered the Revolution of 1910–1917, which limited agrarian capitalism. The author then turns to the consequences of these different property regimes in the twentieth century and argues that capitalist social relations have been more dominant in the Brazilian than in the Mexican countryside. The conservative modernization of the 1960s and 1970s is identified as a turning point in the fully capitalist development of agriculture in Brazil. The shift toward food imports, the elimination of subsidies, and the reform of Article 27 of the Constitution signal the re-establishment of the conditions for capitalist development of agriculture in Mexico. The article ends with an assessment of the MST and EZLN's strategies to protect peasants’ access to land and to influence the institutional setting determining access to land.     

产权制度改革与职工董事、监事制度

国有经济布局结构的调整和国有企业的战略性改组 ,必须依托已建立了现代企业制度的企业去完成。这不可避免地要涉及企业微观基础的再造。其核心内容是产权制度改革和劳动关系变化。工会作为劳动关系的产物 ,必将面临新的机遇和挑战 ,而推进和完善职工董事和监事制度 ,是新形势下工会工作必须加强的一项重要任务。作者重点分析了企业产权制度改革的内容和实质 ,提出 :工会 ,以及主要代表职工合法权益的职工董事、监事 ,要更好地发挥作用 ,必须转变观念 ,摆正位置 ,抓住重点 ,提高素质。     

关于积极促进职工董事、监事工作的思考

坚持和完善职工董事、监事制度 ,是工会工作的一个重要方面。国有独资和控股的公司制企业 ,工会主席应当作为职工代表进入董事会 ,这不是一般的方法问题 ,而是建立有中国特色现代企业制度的根本原则问题。