Flexicurity and Gender Mainstreaming: Deliberative Processes, Knowledge Networks and the European Labour Market

Gender mainstreaming and flexicurity have been adopted as separate labour market objectives in the European Union since the mid-1990s. It is remarkable that there has been a virtual absence of gender concerns in the deliberations on flexicurity for over a decade. When gender concerns were introduced into the flexicurity deliberations in 2007, they were incorporated in the 6th principle of flexicurity which “should support gender equality by promoting equal access to quality employment for women and men, and by offering possibilities to reconcile work and family life” (European Union 2007:10). The basic assumption was that the objectives of flexicurity and gender mainstreaming were compatible and even mutually supportive. Flexicurity – the labour market policy that claims to combine and enhances both flexibility and security in the labour market – emerged as an important concept in the mid-1990s and is currently viewed by the European Commission as key to the “EU’s dilemma of how to maintain and improve competitiveness whilst preserving the European social model” (European Commission 2007).....

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