Containing contributions by some of the best known researchers in the field, this volume considers the intersection between the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), a relatively new mode of policy-making, and gender equality, a long-standing area of EU policy. It draws on a range of disciplinary perspectives to examine the effectiveness of the OMC as a medium for the advancement of gender equality within the EU. It also considers gender in the OMC in a variety of contexts and at both a general EU and Member State level. Central to the discussion is the concept of gender mainstreaming which proposes that a gender equality perspective should be incorporated at every level and opportunity of EU policy and practice. The authors assess how successful this has been in the context of the OMC. The book provides a unique and contemporary body of work on the OMC which adds significantly to existing understandings of this form of governance and informs critical debate of EU social governance.

The contributors in this volume examine the practical operations, at national and subnational levels, of the European Employment and Social Inclusion Strategies, which are the most important examples of the Open Method of Co-ordination as a new instrument of EU governance.

Women are well represented in the cultural and creative sectors (CCS) and are proven to participate more in culture than men. However, when it comes to their specific situation and role in the CCS, inequalities become apparent - even more when intersectional factors are taken into consideration. In the Work Plan for Culture 2019-2022, gender equality in the CCS was selected as one of the priorities for action for the first time. To prepare a report on this topic, national experts from 22 EU Member States worked together from September 2019 until April 2021 on the basis of their professional expertise. The political momentum for the work of the group was promising. In autumn 2019, Ursula von der Leyen became the first female president of the European Commission and declared gender equality as one of her priorities. Subsequently, in March 2020, the European Commission presented the Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025 with key actions and an increased gender perspective for implementation in all EU policies, including culture and media.

This report focuses on the role that culture plays in promoting gender equality and, more importantly, how to achieve gender equality within the cultural and creative sectors (CCS). The EU Member States identified gender equality for the first time as a priority for action in the Work Plan for Culture 2019-2022. Indeed, there are many reasons that this topic should receive the attention it deserves. Gender equality is a core value of the EU fundamental rights and a key principle of the European Pillar of Social Rights. It is also a precondition for cultural diversity. The promotion of gender equality and the fight against gender discrimination are twin goals of the EU, including in culture.

The aim of this article is to analyse the development of the concepts of equal opportunities between men and women and gender mainstreaming with regard to a new policy approach taken outside the traditional community method and to raise the question to what extent these policy instruments can be considered as a "new tool" to combat gender discrimination. The European Employment Strategy (EES) and the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) are two examples of an instrument outside the community method, which tries to increase the recognition of the gender dimension of the labour market and to improve the initiatives taken in the interrelated field of social inclusion of women by the use of "soft" policy instruments and voluntarist procedures. The paper illustrates the development of the concept of equal opportunities between men and women and gender mainstreaming under the EES and the OMC; more precisely, the paper seeks to demonstrate that the concepts of equal opportunities between men and women and gender mainstreaming cannot be addressed by reference to harmonisation instruments exclusively, but need, due to the diverse approach towards gender equality on a national level, a decentralised approach as it is offered by the coordination instrument, which should be understood as a complementary tool of integration.

This booklet contains the collected recommendations of the OMC expert group report 'Towards Gender Equality in the Cultural and Creative Sectors' (2021). All recommendations are based on practical experience and good practise case studies. They highlight the importance of political commitment to improving gender equality in the cultural and creative sectors (CCS). It should also be stressed that gender equality strategies without targets or gender equality targets without monitoring are less effective and artistic quality and artistic freedom remain the primary selection criteria for any of the proposed measures. The following recommendations correspond to all the recommendations of the OMC report and, firstly, include general recommendations addressing all policy makers and persons in positions of power, as well as the cultural and creative sectors, the media, and the education sector (Chapter 5 of the OMC report). Secondly, this booklet contains detailed recommendations focusing on the key challenges as emphasised by the OMC group (Chapter 6 of the OMC report). These consist of gender stereotypes, sexual harassment, access to the labour market and the gender pay gap, access to resources, access to leadership positions, and female entrepreneurship. This booklet serves the easy accessibility and thus the implementation of the recommendations developed by the OMC group. Implementing these recommendations will contribute to cultural diversity and gender equality in the CCS across Europe.

In recent years new or experimental approaches to governance in the EU, namely the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), have attracted great interest and controversy. This book examines the European Employment Strategy (EES) and its implementation through the OMC, exploring the promises and limitations of the EES for EU social law and policy and for the safeguard of social rights. This significant and timely work offers new insights and fresh perspectives into the operation of New Governance and its relationship with both European and national law and constitutionalism. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students working in European law – specifically in the field of EU employment law and gender equality – and European governance studies in general.

The EU has slowly but surely developed a solid body of equality law that prohibits different facets of discrimination. While the Union had initially developed anti-discrimination norms that served only the commercial rationale of the common market, focusing on nationality (of a Member State) and gender as protected grounds, the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) supplied five additional prohibited grounds of discrimination to the EU legislative palette, in line with a much broader egalitarian rationale. In 2000, two EU Equality Directives followed, one focusing on race and ethnic origin, the other covering the remaining four grounds introduced by the Treaty of Amsterdam, namely religion, sexual orientation, disabilities and age. Eighteen years after the adoption of the watershed Equality Directives, it seems timely to dedicate a book to their limits and prospects, to look at the progress made, and to revisit the rise of EU anti-discrimination law beyond gender. This volume sets out to capture the striking developments and shortcomings that have taken place in the interpretation of relevant EU secondary law. Firstly, the book unfolds an up-to-date systematic reappraisal of the five 'newer' grounds of discrimination, which have so far received mostly fragmented coverage. Secondly, and more generally, the volume captures how and to what extent the Equality Directives have enabled or, at times, prevented the Court of Justice of the European Union from developing even broader and more refined anti-discrimination jurisprudence. Thus, the book offers a glimpse into the past, present and – it is hoped – future of EU anti-discrimination law as, despite all the flaws in the Union's 'Garden of Earthly Delights', it offers one of the highest standards of protection in comparative anti-discrimination law.

As a field of scholarship, gender and politics has exploded over the last fifty years and is now global, institutionalized, and ever expanding. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics brings to political science an accessible and comprehensive overview of the key contributions of gender scholars to the study of politics and shows how these contributions produce a richer understanding of polities and societies. Like the field it represents, the handbook has a broad understanding of what counts as political and is based on a notion of gender that highlights masculinities as well as femininities, thereby moving feminist debates in politics beyond the focus on women. It engages with some of the key aspects of political science as well as important themes in gender and feminist research (such as sexuality and body politics), thereby forging a dialogue between gender studies in politics and mainstream political science. The handbook is organized in sections that look at sexuality and body politics; political economy; civil society; participation, representation and policymaking; institutions, states and governance as well as nation, citizenship and identity. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics contains and reflects the best scholarship in its field.

Büchs analyses the goals and instruments of the Open Method of Coordination, discusses approaches which theorize its functioning, examines its policy content and develops a framework for its evaluation. Through the examination of a case study the author demonstrates how policy actors apply the OMC in employment in Germany and the United Kingdom.