Women’s Europeanist networks and the gendering of EEC labour policies during the long 1960s (1957–74)

Abstract

International audienceHistorians and political scientists have long traced the introduction of a reflection on the gendered impact of European public policies back to the mid-1970s. This was linked in particular to the attempt to reduce inequalities between men and women at work, and to the adoption of European legislation in this area, based on directives designed to ensure the application of Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome. This legal approach provides little explanation of the reasons, actors and modalities for putting gender issues on the agenda of the European Economic Communities (EEC). Based mostly on the archives of women’s associations linked to the European Movement, and secondarily on the holdings of several European institutions (Commission, Parliament, Council, Economic and Social Committee), this article offers an original top-down and bottom-up analysis of the process of gendering EEC policies between 1957 and 1974. It contributes to the analysis of the economisation of the EEC social policies and shows that, for women Europeanist activists of the 1960s, gender equality could not be reduced to the issue of wages. Gendering European policies neither represented a linear process of framing of social policies under the economic goals of the EEC, nor was it an insignificant tool in the affirmation of the European institutions vis-à-vis the Member States. Eventually, studying the agency of women’s associations in the inclusion of gender in EEC labour policies allows the article to shed new light on the citizen impulses in the European integration process, from the 1960s onwards