The Fading Goal of Gender Equality: Three Policy Directions that Underpin the Resilience of Gendered Socio-economic Inequalities

Despite rhetorical commitment to gender equality as a fundamental value at international, supranational and national level, we continue to see economic and social inequalities in long-familiar areas. This article explores public policy communities’ contribution to this resilience of inequalities in income, work and care by focussing on three responses to socio-economic restructuring and new social risks: labour force activation; the social investment perspective; treating gender as one of multiple discriminations. The article stresses the importance of making an analytic distinction between a policy discourse that displays “gender awareness” and one that identifies gender equality as a policy goal. By making this analytic distinction it is possible to identify a major change that has occurred in the last two decades in the universe of political discourse. This is the displacement of the gender equality discourse, despite rising gender awareness. The discourse on equality in income, work and care has been down-played within the universe of political discourse as other diagnostics either write gender equality out, rename women as “mothers,” or fold gender inequalities into a discursive frame of multiple and intersecting inequalities.