Friday, March 14, 2014
Congressional A (Omni Shoreham)
The European Union (EU) holds equality and social inclusion as foundational principles for policy planning and action in the employment and social sectors. Indeed, gender mainstreaming, by definition, is to occur in all policy areas and actions to ensure enhanced integration and representation for women. This has produced some success in bringing “mainstream women” – educated, majority population women – into traditional leadership roles. However, much remains to be done for large segments of populations to see true inclusion. This paper is the first stage of a multi-phase project to examine why institutional strategies for gender mainstreaming have failed to reach women with multiple (minority) identities. What strategies need to be created, at the local, national, and supra-national level to ensure a pipeline access for women living in Europe’s parallel societies? We examine the Commission’s regular reports on gender equality, together with integration strategies in Europe 2020, to determine where and at what level mainstreaming of minority women does or needs to occur. We focus on Roma women to determine what lessons, if any, have been learned from Roma integration as the Decade of Roma Inclusion concludes. We contend that present metrics for assessing gender inclusion do not and will not improve the status of women with multiple minority identities as those women are living in conditions of hyper-segregation. We propose the use of a ‘social inclusion index’ as a better measure to assess the success of inclusion measures across education, employment, and integration in Europe 2020.
