Gender Equality Between Spain and Denmark

I. Introduction

Equality between women and men is a fundamental right, a common value of the EU, and a necessary condition for the achievement of the EU objectives of growth, employment and social cohesion. Although inequalities still exist, the EU has made significant progress over the last decades in achieving equality between women and men. This is mainly thanks to equal treatment legislation, gender mainstreaming and specific measures for the advancement of women

The EU welfare states fully committed themselves to working women as part of the 2000 Lisbon strategy. If more women worked, this would contribute to the European aspirations of becoming ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world’, while at the same time having ‘sustainable, active and dynamic welfare states’. This has been underlined recently by the Kok Report, which assessed Lisbon. The report states that if Europe wants to show its social face, the focus should be on economic growth and employment.

The Lisbon targets – female employment rates of 60 percent in 2010 – have not been reached. In 2003, the European average was 55 percent, but there is time left. More striking are the huge changes and large cross-national differences. Denmark and Sweden already passed the Lisbon criteria in the 1970s, and today more than 70 percent of women work. In the UK and the Netherlands the ‘score’ is around 65 percent, although British mothers participate much less when they have young children (ages 0-2), namely 52 percent. Germany (59 percent), France (57 percent) and Belgium (52 percent), and especially Italy (43 percent) and Spain (46 percent) are at the lower end. Besides, part-time/full-time rates vary substantially. The revolutionary growth in the Netherlands is mainly due to part-time work, as Dutch women rarely work full-time (European Communities 2004; Eurostat 2005).

However, in the EU there are many differences between its countries, an in this essay, I would like...