European Social Partners and Gender Equality Policy: from Mistrust to Impediment

This paper aims to analyse the nature and evolution of the role played by labour market organisations in the making of European gender equality policy. It highlights three distinct sequences of public action: a relationship marked by mistrust until the end of the 1980s, then with the development of European social dialogue and until the end of the 2000s, a constrained relationship, and finally the most recent period is that of an impeded relationship: the social partners privileged institutional position is being questioned which reduces their capacity to play a central role in the development and orientation of gender equality policy, moreover their restricted conception of the principle of gender equality contributes to hindering the development of transformative measures.