I have already referred to the presence in the texts of the idea of men as the norm, and I undertake now to discuss this issue a bit further.
One of the interviewees argues that policy-makers
still consider men to be the norm: what is good for men is good for everyone. What they want is what everyone wants, if they suffer from something it is a common suffering. So, when you have something that is specific for women, it’s not even seen. It’s not even noticed. [...] And I think it’s very important also to say that this is not to say that we
should be the same, men and women should be sort of similar or the same. We should be equal, I’m sure that for a very very long time at least men and women will want different things, we want to do different things, and we want to devote our lives to different things, and I don’t think that it is a problem. But it should be considered people’s wants, and needs, and desires as equally important.118
In this regard, another interviewee says, ‘The myth of the equal policy is
“one policy for all”.’ She sees this as a core problem in policy-making and gender issues:
If you develop a policy because you think that the target group is male and white and this type of worker, you have a policy that there is not the policy for the reality, you have a policy that deals with a certain group of people and would give advantages to a certain group of people, but not to all citizens, it creates inequality, although you think that your policy is ‘one policy equal for all’, but reality is different.119
Another interviewee also refers to this belief, this illusion, of all being the same. She refers specifically to a ‘sort of French thinking’, which she says is quite strong among EC policy-makers, that supposes that ‘everybody is equal and [has] universal rights’. It is difficult, therefore, for some people to think of differences as compatible with equality. She says, ‘Very often, people I work with, men or women, do not want to see any difference.’ The idea is that ‘they do not want’ to recognise differences between women and men because ‘they fear’ that, in doing so, they will risk equality.120
On the other hand, it is possible to find counterarguments or competing definitions within the very same texts. What the 2005 Report on Equality says is interesting in this regard. It states that gender equality ‘is achieved when the different behaviour, aspirations and needs of women and men are equally valued and favoured and do not give rise to different consequences that reinforce inequalities’ (European Commission 2005b: 10).
Hence, recognition does exist in policy texts that there are differences and that it is necessary to include them in equality, though these arguments do not abound in policy documents. On the contrary, the idea that women should fulfil certain conditions in order to achieve equality is very much emphasised.
Joan Scott argues that the binary opposition equality/difference actually obscures the interdependence that exists between equality and difference in
118 Interview with MEP, May 2008. The emphasis is added to reflect the interviewee’s spoken stress on the word.
119 Interview with gender expert at EC, May 2008.
120 Interview with senior gender expert at EC, May 2008.
the sense that equality does not mean ruling out differences and difference does not presuppose that equality has to be denied (1988: 38).
The opposition equality/difference is powerful in that it still functions to corroborate that men are the norm. The opposition is powerful because it is simple: equality has to entail that we are all equals, that we are all the same, which means that women are the same as men, that men are the norm. If not, if instead we are different, equality is a difficult enterprise. Thus, it is necessary to think about equality and difference not as an oppositional pair but as complementary. As Scott says:
Equality, in the political theory of rights that lies behind the claims of excluded groups for justice, means the ignoring of differences between individuals for a particular purpose or in a particular context. […] This presumes a social agreement to consider obviously different people as equivalent (not identical) for a stated purpose. In this usage, the opposite of equality is inequality or inequivalence, the noncommensurability of individuals or groups in certain circumstances, for certain purposes. […] The political notion of equality thus includes, indeed depends on, an acknowledgment of the existence of difference. Demands for equality have rested on implicit and usually unrecognized arguments from difference; if individuals or groups were identical or the same there would be no need to ask for equality. Equality might well be defined as deliberate indifference to specified differences. (1988: 44)
The alternative to the binary construction of sexual difference is not sameness, identity, or androgyny. […] It is not sameness or identity between women and men that we want to claim but a more complicated historically variable diversity than is permitted by the opposition male/female, a diversity that is also differently expressed for different purposes in different contexts. In effect, the duality this opposition creates draws one line of difference, invests it with biological explanations, and then treats each side of the opposition as a unitary phenomenon. Everything in each category (male/female) is assumed to be the same; hence, differences within either category are suppressed. In contrast, our goal is to see not only differences between the sexes but also the way these work to repress differences within gender groups. The sameness constructed on each side of the binary opposition hides the multiple play of differences and maintains their irrelevance and invisibility. (ibid.: 45–46)
Scott tackles several of the issues referred to above (1988). If the gender mainstreaming strategy is meant to work, the question of gender equality cannot be thought of in terms of binary distinctions (male/female;
equality/difference) nor based on a principle of sameness. Conceptually, gender mainstreaming does imply the transformation of the gender structure (Rees 1998; Walby 2011).121 Moreover, together with transformation, the EU
121 See discussion in chapter 1.
dual-track approach to gender mainstreaming incorporates the idea of difference, which lies behind positive action strategies.