Gender mainstreaming and its power to influence: progress towards effective equality in the EU?

Over the past 25 years, the European Union (EU) has incorporated gender mainstreaming into its official policy approaches towards gender equality. This paper aims to analyse the vision of gender equality that has inspired the design and content of European policies (equality ad intra), as well as the power of gender mainstreaming to influence effective equality in member states (equality ad extra). The adoption of this mainstreaming approach has been justified as a way to ensure the overall coherence of all actions by avoiding overlaps and increasing their effectiveness and visibility. However, their effective incorporation into European policies remains a pending task, their implementation is fragmented and progress on gender equality has been slow and patchy.