Pro-egalitarian family policy on the supranational European level – an answer to the fertility decline in ageing welfare societies?

Heike Kahlert, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich

Reflections on the fertility decline and the ageing of European welfare societies are not new on the supranational European agenda but now since the turn of the millenium they have started to become more visible. In these discussions economic, demographic and equality oriented arguments are mutually connected. In the paper I will discuss how the EU-European strategy of gender mainstreaming is supposed to solving the causes and consequences of demographic change and how it is interwoven with attempts to develop a supranational European family policy. Indeed, this may sound strange because family policy in the European Union still is a policy topic in national responsibility. However, on the supranational European level attempts to develop a common European family policy have started in the 1980s and been discussed in the light of putting gender equality into action. A main topic in these discussions is the problem of reconciling work and family that in European politics still is mainly presented as a problem of women. But gender equality politics on the European level also takes the problem of the gendered division of labour in public and private spheres into account. According to official papers of the European Commission of the European Union this gendered division of labour should be changed to enable women to work and to become and be mothers. So changes in gender relations in the direction of more gender equality in public and private spheres are supposed to heighten women’s participation in the labour market (as the Lisbon-Agenda requests) and to heighten the fertility rate as well. My paper is based on the results of a qualitative content analysis of the main documents by the European Commission and the European Council that deal with demographic change and gender equality on the supranational European level.