showCASE No. 124: Gender Equality in the European Union: a Differentiated Integration?
Editorial
With this edition of showCASE we are ending a journey that began over five years ago, on 07 October 2016, when the very first issue was published. Throughout the years, the bulletin evolved in its shape and form, switching from being a weekly to a monthly publication, gaining new editors and contributors, and adding new products that were complementing the main analytical articles. What has not changed, however, has been our Team’s dedication to providing our readers with informative, fresh, and insightful commentaries on pressing economic, political, and social developments as they unfolded.
We would like to thank all those who contributed to showCASE over the past half decade: contributors, editors, and communications managers, as well as our readers who kept on giving us motivation to make every issue a guiltless pleasure to read.
We would also like to take this opportunity to wish all those celebrating Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We hope 2022 will be better than 2021 on all personal and professional fronts – and that you, dear readers, will keep on enjoying other CASE products throughout the upcoming months.
With best regards,
showCASE Editorial Team
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By Aleksandra Polak, PhD researcher in political science at the University of Warsaw
The European Union (EU) is considered one of the global leaders in regard to promotion of equality between men and women, both inside and outside its borders. Principal documents framing European Commission’s initiatives in this area are gender equality strategies. While the current Gender Equality Strategy for years 2020-2025 sets out ambitious goals for the EU as a bloc, it does not address – despite being titled “A Union of Equality” – the significant disparities between the Member States (MS) when it comes to different dimensions of gender equality and women’s rights.
The present edition of showCASE examines the progress in the key areas spotlighted in the Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025: closing the employment and pay gaps, achieving gender balance in economic and political decision-making, and eliminating gender-based violence. Instead of focusing exclusively on the overall EU’s performance, it applies the concept of an upward convergence, which improves when progress is observed in each Member State, with less gender-equal societies catching up with the most gender-equal ones, reducing the overall disparities. Consequently, what can be tracked is not only aggregated progress of the EU over the 5-year-period, but also the convergence between the Member States.
