EU And Gender Equality

The thesis is the primary study about the women's participation in decision-making. The purpose of the thesis is exploring not only the effect of EU institution in promoting women's participation in decision-making within it but also the influencing factors of women's political participation in order to meet the demand of gender equality. Depending on the background of European integration, this study makes a comprehensive research about the effects of EU institution in making the unequal gender relation right in the process of decision-making.With the gradual development of economy and society, eliminating all kinds of discriminations based on Gender and improving women's position in society have became important issues on the social, economic and political development agendas in many countries of the world. The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in 1995 emphasized the significance of the equality between men and women, and then gender equality became the condition of human rights and social justice and the precondition of equality, development and peace. At the same time, women's participation in decision-making process equally to men has become an important content of gender equality and important indicator of the realization of gender equality following the totally launch of gender equality. Just because of the close connection with justice and democracy, the aim of equality, development and democracy can not be realized without women's participation and perspective in any decision-making level. So it is a truth that guaranteeing women's participation in power and decision-making and improving women's ability to be a leader are not only the demands of democracy but also the responsibilities of nation states. With the development of regionalization and globalization, the actors who participate in promoting women's participation in decision-making are both within nation states and on transactional, international level. Among these, the effect of EU institution is more notable than other institutions and agents because of its specificity different from other international organization.Along with the deepening and expanding of European integration, the influence of EU institution has also been greatly enhanced, the range of its effect has expended from economic domain to social domain. Although the process of establishing the social policy in EU was very slow, gender policy as a main part of social policy got sufficient development. Since entering 21th century, EU has expended its attention from the equality of women in career to social and political field. At the same time, the increase about importance of women's participation in decision-making process for the continuous development of EU promoted EU to pay close attention to gender equality in decision-making process and raise, implement some relevant idea and measures. EU institution became one of the key factors which can affect the condition of women's participation in decision-making. The main background of the promotion for women's participation in decision-making contains two sides. The first is that the strategy of feminism has changed from deviating to paying more attention to the representation of female in decision-making agencies and trying to eliminate the discrimination in the decision-making process. The change made women's participation in decision-making emerge on the calendar of EU member states as a new point then raise to EU level. The second is that women's participation in decision-making is important for the development of EU and favorable for a strong democracy and effective utilization human resources.In this context EU institution promote women's participation in decision-making from legal, institution and policy dimension. In legislation, EU gives framework guidance to member states by making some secondary legislations and many soft laws excepted the regulating for women's equal right to participate in the decision-making by EC Treaties. In institutions, the setting up and development of EU institutions afford important power position and political opportunities to Women's participation in decision-making and pushing forward the equality within EU institutions by the actions of main agencies which in charge of gender equality issues. In policy dimension, EU formulates a series of direct and indirect policies to improve women's participation in decision-making process. The direct policies include financial support, collecting data, supervising actions of member states, gender mainstreaming and so on. The indirect policies include the gender equality policies of employment, men and women's role in family, education and training that have positive effects to women's participation in decision-making. After more than ten years efforts, the effects of EU institution in promoting women's participation in decision-making are appearing gradually. The evaluation for effectiveness of EU institution in promoting will be launched from EU and member states level. We can conclude from the analysis that the condition of women's participation in decision-making on both level has raised to a certain extent from 1990s and on the question of women's participation in decision-making EU institution really has led to some changes in member states. At the same time the EU institution has shaped a positive environment which affords an informal effect within EU. In general, after 1990s there is a positive correlation between the construction of EU institution and the situation of women's participation in decision-making. For all that, the current situation of women's participation in decision-making still can not meet the challenge of gender equality. There are three main reasons which lead to the result. The first is that the issue- women's participation in decision-making is complex; the second is that there are some limitations existing in EU institutions and, the third one is that there are some obstacles in the process of putting EU legislations and policies into practice.Seen from the framework, the essay is composed of three parts: the first part is the introduction, which gives a presentation on the raising of questions, the significance of research, and reviews of the present research status at home and abroad, the research aim, major research methods and basic concepts, the framework of the thesis. Then the second part is the body which includes three chapters provides a deep discussion about the basic problems from three aspects. Those are the background of the promoting action of EU institution in women's participation in decision-making, the concrete actions of EU institution, the effectiveness of EU institution in promoting and some existing problems. The last part is the conclusion. It includes a deep analysis for the research result on experienced and theoretical perspective excepting the conclusion on the research.