Gender Equality Promotion in Portuguese Employment Policy: Europeanization through Domestic Empowerment

Abstract

This chapter examines the PEP reforms with regard to the promotion of gender equality. As in the Greek case, for analytical reasons this inquiry is divided into two policy areas: (i) GM and (ii) dedicated equality measures in employment policy. The first section of the chapter outlines the features of Portuguese employment policy (PEP) before the mid-1990s, with a particular focus on gender equality promotion, arguing that, despite Portugal’s very good labour market performance for women and some significant reforms after the late 1970s reforms, gender equality promotion lost salience and disappeared from the agenda concerning PEP until the mid-1990s. The second section examines the reforms that took place after the mid-1990s, which aimed at promoting GM and dedicated equality measures in employment policy. As in all other cases of the book, this division is made in order to examine the temporal sequences of reforms and the content of the agenda and policy before and after the EES and thus establish any causal significance of the EES. It is argued that, despite its considerably better labour market situation, Portugal showed a similar reform pattern to Greece regarding gender equality promotion in PEP. More specifically, after 1995, contrary to the previous period of immobility since the Portuguese entry to the EU (1986), a plethora of measures and reforms took place aiming at promoting gender equality in PEP.