EU:S JÄMSTÄLLDHETSSTRATEGIER - PROGRESSIVA ELLER KONSERVATIVA? En policyanalys om jämställdhet över tid

Abstract

This thesis aims to find out whether the European Union´s (EU) gender equality strategies over time evolve towards a more progressive or conservative type of gender equality strategy. The EU has under a long period of time worked for gender equality. But the member states of the EU and Europe in general score very differently on different gender equality indicators. To investigate how the EU’s gender equality strategies differ over time, I conduct a qualitative text analysis on three official policy documents from 2010-2025. The three different equality strategies will be analyzed and compared to each other, with the intention to find differences and evolvements over time. Based on different feminist theories, I derive criteria for a conservative and a progressive idealtype of gender equality policy. I analyze the policy documents from the framework WPR with “problem, cause and solution”. The meaning of this is to understand what the different strategies focus on. Afterwards I will apply my idealtype, theories and my research question to do a comparison between the three documents. My findings demonstrate that there is a slight difference between the three strategies, but not in a chronological order. I would like to claim that the strategy from 2016-2019 is more conservative than both 2010-2015 and 2020-2025. 2010–2015 is relatively progressive and the most progressive one is 2020–2025.