From Rome to Maastricht: The Golden Age of an Exceptional Policy?

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to present an overview of the activities of the EC in the fight against inequalities between women and men and the promotion of gender equality, between the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. In terms of the European integration process in general and gender equality policy in particular, the signing of the Treaty of Rome can be seen as a kind of big bang: the starting point from which everything else sprang. However, although the Treaty was fundamental, it was not final. As we will see in this chapter, the EC’s gender equality policy cannot be limited to primary law; the Treaty’s legal foundations alone do not help us understand the developments in equality that have occurred in the three decades that followed.