Gender mainstreaming in European employment policies

This article analyzes how gender mainstreaming is discursively redefined in a neoliberal frame within the European Employment Strategy, and looks at the effect of this on employment practices in Germany. The focus of the article is on new governance tools such as the open method of coordination (OMC) in the European employment strategy and the implementation of gender mainstreaming in Germany. From a theoretical perspective, following studies on governmentality, the European integration process, with its new governance tools like the OMC, can be interpreted in a way that changes our perspective on governance. The European integration process can be analyzed as changing and regulating the mechanisms of governance with technologies such as knowledge and economically oriented political benchmarks which reframe gender policies such as gender mainstreaming in an activating and individualizing strategy. In looking at gender mainstreaming, therefore, the article deals with discourses and governmental programs as technologies of power which steer policies and governance mechanisms towards neoliberal rationalities and practices, thus highlighting the governmental technologies used to consolidate neoliberal policies.