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2 Eur. L.J. 1 (1996)

handle is hein.journals/eurlj2 and id is 1 raw text is: European Law Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, March 1996, pp. 1-2 0 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1996, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA Correspondence: letters in response to articles published in the European Law Journal or on topical developments regarding issues with which the journal is concerned, of no more than 500 words, may be sent to the editorial address and considered for publication in the correspondence section. 'Encapsulating Feminism' Dear Editor, Wolfgang Streeck, in his article in your first issue, describes the women's rights policy of the European Union as representing a federalism which is 'encapsulated. By this he seems to mean that although the policy has developed some (weak) federal characteristics, these are confined to a single area and have few repercussions. This designation certainly pays more attention to the women's policy than is usual; it also in a subtle way continues its marginalisation. The trajectory of the EU women's policy over more than thirty years provides a unique case study of how bureaucrats, law-makers and popular movements interact in the EU framework. And far from being 'encapsulated', I would argue that the surprising thing about this policy development has been the seepage and spillage that has taken place. So the policy has expanded from Article 119 in the Treaty of Rome on equal pay, through six Directives and four Action Programmes, and into more than seventy cases before the European Court of Justice. This has involved the development of a considerable infrastructure around the policy and what I have called a 'women's European policy network'2. Material reality, certainly in respect of women, does not distinguish clearly between the public and the private, the economic and the social. Thus activism by different groups of women has pressed hard on the apparent dividing line, so that the EU women's policy has moved from a narrow to a broad view of employment issues, is edging into the sexual and the private, and is raising questions about the representation of women. Though some of these developments are problematic in the present climate, the achievement is striking. It is true that despite this expansion the impact of the women's policy has been limited, in the sense that it has not created a widespread engagement with the European project among substantial numbers of women. This is hardly surprising given the nature of the EU policy process, which sets huge obstacles in the way of those who would seek to transform partial involvement into sustained transnational politics. Despite this, I would argue that developments around the women's policy have gone further in this direction than those in any other area of EU policy involving popular participation. Streeck, 'Neo-Voluntarism: A New European Social Policy Regime', (1995) 1 European Law Journal 31, p 44. 2 C. Hoskyns, Integrating Gender - Women, Law and Polities in the European Union (Verso, 1996).

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