Gender mainstreaming requires a radical redefinition of policy values and practices. This initial discussion explores the way the mainstreaming approach attempts to change the definitions of the situation so that equality in gender relations becomes an element at the point of departure. Factors that may affect whether gender mainstreaming will become an institutional innovation include the extent to which there is a commitment to a gender mission, the level of sophistication in terms of gender and policy issues in the administrative setting, the level of resistance to gender equality, and the extent to which gender experts play a role. This article investigates the role of these contextual factors as related to experiences in the European Union Commission and several states in Northern Europe.
Gender mainstreaming is one of the major strategies adopted by the European Union and member states for achieving gender equality. It is seen as a major success, and other social movements have begun to demand mainstreaming for their issues in European social policy. This article considers eight recent studies which include Belgium, a middle case as far as European gender equality is concerned. They show meagre results in terms of altering the understanding of equality policy to include a gender perspective, and applying efforts transversally. The article also evaluates the successes and challenges of the gender mainstreaming strategy ten years after its adoption. It then examines the changes in the organization of EU equality issues with regard to diversity and the implications for the gender mainstreaming strategy. These changes include efforts to address new target groups under Article 13 as well as the issues posed by enlargement. It thus addresses the question: To what extent can experience relating to gender mainstreaming be utilized to meet evolving demands? Recent developments in intersectional theory may offer fruitful new angles.
A revised version of the conventional approach of classifying families in social class analysis recently surfaced in Sociology. Two-partner families are classified according to the class position of the main bread-winner, usually male. This approach discounts the importance of the other partner's work experience within the family. The special case of the cross-class couple is used to illuminate significant problems in the conventional approach. Swedish data from 1980 brings into question several of the assumptions of the conventional approach. Do women actually have a weaker attachment to the world of work? Are most families actually class homogeneous as the unitary family classification system would lead one to believe? Using evidence from a qualitative study of cross-class couples, this paper argues that diametrically opposed class experiences have significant effects on dynamics in the family unit. Issues in the division of labour in the home and access to cultural capital are clearly affected in class heterogeneous families. Women's work makes a significant difference in everyday life in the family and should necessarily affect the classification of families in class analysis.
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