Review of Barbara Havelkova : Gender equality in law : uncovering the legacies of Czech state socialism

The value of sex/gender as analytical categories, the notions of sameness and difference, the meaning of equality, and the utility of law for achieving transformative social change have been staple themes in feminist legal scholarship. Their engagement has proven fruitful not only for uncovering law’s gendered bias and contesting its role in reproducing inequality, but also for questioning the explanatory potential of various theories of law and justice, including those put forward within feminist scholarship itself

Active aging through employment : a critical feminist perspective on Polish policy

Age has become a crucial factor in labour market regulation measures undertaken in Poland in the last several years. Inspired by Europe 2020 strategy of ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’, Poland’s own long-term development plans, especially those adopted by the former Civic Platform-led administration, feature significant emphasis on extended working lives as essential to economic sustainability. Given low employment rates among Poland’s older age cohorts, and the shortfall between the actual and statutory age of retirement, many of the country’s active aging measures have focused primarily on employment activation of workers above the age 50. The policy mix of supply-side activation techniques and demand-side incentives, combined with pension system reforms, have been the key measures designed to encourage longer working lives. Yet, to what extent are these measures achievable and adequate? Using a feminist, socio-legal perspective, this paper critically evaluates Poland’s active aging policy and reforms by locating them at intersection of the transformation and re-structuring of the Polish welfare state and the re-regulation of the country’s labour market according to neoliberal proscriptions. Two key points of interest – or sources of tension – are identified: the extent to which the efforts to bolster older people’s employment participation take adequate notice of labour market conditions and the roles that older people play in the provision of care and other activities involved in maintenance of living standards. As the paper shows, the potentially negative consequences of this policy trajectory for older people’s wellbeing in and out of the labour market, and for the organization of care and the broader processes of social reproduction, have tended to be downplayed in policy and legal reform, while being potentially exacerbated by them

Reshaping EU working-time regulation : towards a more sustainable regime

The European Commission’s 2015 Roadmap on work-life balance cites a comprehensive policy and regulatory approach as essential to addressing the interrelated goals of reconciling work and family, the sharing of care work between women and men, and attaining substantive gender equality. However, the EU’s key instrument setting ‘normal’ hours of work standards, the Working Time Directive, is absent from the measures identified as central to such a comprehensive approach. Attributing this omission in part to the Directive’s historic evolution, its controversial and unsettled status, and its apparent gender ‘neutrality’, this article argues that work-life balance strategies must incorporate standard working-time considerations if they are to be effective; likewise, a more meaningful engagement with and the advancement of workfamily reconciliation and equality goals is crucial for the Working Time Directive’s continued relevance. Failing such a more obvious articulation between the two sets of policies, a number of goals currently on the EU agenda will be difficult to attain, as supporting caregivers and redistributing unpaid work between women and men, but also objectives of active aging and Europe’s long-term social sustainability, require the development of more sustainable work models and working-time practices

Regulating work with people and 'nature' in mind : feminist reflections

Whether labor law should deal with the issues of socio-ecological sustainability, and how it might do so, have been questions rarely considered in the many important debates on labor law’s normative foundations, boundaries, and goals. ‘Nature’ is not, after all, labor law’s domain. But work – which is labor law’s domain, though what counts as work and which work relations ought to fall under law’s protective umbrella remain live questions – is both, implicated in the contemporary socio-ecological crisis and features prominently in various policy proposals on how to address this crisis and its uneven impacts on people and the biosphere. With the discourse of sustainability espoused by all major policy actors, including the International Labor Organization (ILO) , ecological thinking is making its way into human resources lexicons , and the ‘green’ banner being increasingly taken up by the labor movement, it might be time also for labor lawyers to reflect on how we can contribute to this conversation. This is especially important in light of the fact that the mainstream engagement with sustainability – as its critics alert us – is far from trouble-free. On the one hand, while the ILO matches its ‘green’ agenda with the one on decent work and a ‘just transition’, most mainstream commitments to ecomodernization of the economy and the premise of ‘green jobs’ are still predicated on acceptance of the logics growth and efficiency, albeit of a modified kind. Their implications for workers are neither clear nor unproblematic, not least in light of uneven global development. On the other hand, the rejection of the currently proposed recipe for a ‘green transition’, as exemplified by Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States (US) from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change and his electoral promise to revitalize mining, bring back industrial jobs, and restore American working class pride, is even more troubling, especially in light of its contemptuous instrumentalization of the very people it claims to empower. Either way, work, work systems, and working people are very much integral to, and implicated in, these contradictory narratives and events as they are currently unfolding. And labor law or work regulation more broadly will eventually play a role in them too

EU equality law after a decade of austerity: On the Social Pillar and its transformative potential

This article discusses the evolution of European Union (EU) legislation and policymaking methods during the 10 years since the onset of the financial and economic crisis in 2007/ 2008. In the EU, this period has been characterized by politics of stimulus, austerity, and recovery. Against the backdrop of longer term developments in equality law, we consider how the crisis context influenced this field’s evolution. Through the analysis of a range of legislative and policy proposals, we show that the progressive softening or hybridization of equality law over this period has gone hand in hand with the stronger articulation of equality objectives in terms of a “business case.” While this approach appears to have enabled the proliferation of policy and legal instruments and expanded the reach of equality law into areas where the EU has limited competence to legislate, it has also elevated instrumental economic goals for action at expense of human rights or social rationales. This longer term tendency is also present in the recently adopted European Pillar of Social Rights, and the accompanying policy documentation, which have been hailed as carrying potential to infuse more coherence and to rebalance the social and economic rationales that the EU integration project has unevenly promoted over the years. Mindful that it is still too early for conclusive judgments, we suggest, however, that the transformative possibilities the Pillar carries are likely to be undermined by its soft and economically oriented thrust.Economic and Social Research Council Impact Acceleration Accounts (ESRC IAA) at the University of Southampton and University of WarwickSociety of Legal ScholarsUniversity of Warwick Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS)University of Southampton Centre for Law, Policy and Societ