Gender in Political Economy and EU Law: New Research Directions

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the EU has significantly invested in gender equality measures to tackle multiple forms of discrimination that-among others-women face in the labor market. But although EU's primary mode of legal intervention in relation to gender equality issues has been geared towards the organization of the market, a robust analysis in terms of global political economy asking how EU law structures markets in relation to gendered relations is still missing in EU law and in the emergent 'law and political economy' scholarship in Europe. This short essay explores how the gender in political economy approach (GPE) can illuminate the gendered understanding of markets stabilized through EU law and the distributive effects of the EU integration project along gender, class, race and ethnicity lines. In EU law, this approach prompts research in at least three directions: a) the role of equality (or anti-discrimination law) in the making of the market including this fields complicity with neoliberal policies and ideologies; b) EU economic legal frameworks' role in shaping the household, intersectional gendered relations and inequalities; c) the core-periphery divide within the EU, while placing the analysis of the economy within EU's colonial legacies. This short essay offers signposts and illustrate some of these points using the example of EU anti-discrimination and equality law.

Keywords: law and political economy, gender equality, EU anti-discrimination law, EU integration, labor

JEL Classification: K31, K39