The impact of the European Union policy on gender relations is often underestimated, while the significance of gender has often been underestimated in analyses of the EU. Yet the EU has made significant changes to the governance of gender relations. This has been significantly achieved through the legal regulation of equal opportunities in employment. This paper subjects to detailed critique those arguments that equal opportunities policies can do little to enhance the position of women. The impact of EU equal opportunities policies have been underestimated as a result of: the traditional focus of the social dimension on welfare rather than on social regulation; the theorization of gender relations through the lens of the family and welfare rather than employment, and the underestimation of the power of law.

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Sylvia Walby was the Founding President of the European Sociological Association from 1995 to 1997, having previously chaired the Steering Committee to establish the ESA. She is Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, and was formerly Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Bristol. She is author of Gender Transformations (Routledge, 1997), Theorising Patriarchy (Blackwell, 1990), Patriarchy at Work (Polity, 1986); joint author of Medicine and Nursing: Professions in a Changing Health Service (Sage, 1994), Restructuring Place Class and Gender (Sage, 1990), Sex Crime in the News (Routledge, 1991), Localities, Class and Gender (Pion, 1985) and Contemporary British Society (Polity, 1988, 1994). Edited books include New Agendas for Women (Macmillan, 1999) and, jointly, European Societies: Fission or Fusion (Routledge, 1999).

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