Gender mainstreaming in the European Union

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - General, grade: 1,3, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, course: Intercultural Communication, 13 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The European Union is coming closer together and women such as Angela Merkel, the Federal Chancellor of Germany, play ever more important roles in the definition of European policy. Furthermore, the European gender-policies have been reaching importance since the Fourth International Conference on Women in Beijing.

Strive for equal rights mirrors the composition of the European Parliament, where women are becoming more prominent, but not yet as prominent as men. Additionally not only women as politicians develop since the emergence of gender mainstreaming. This political strategy comprises the behavior of politicians, the behavior of the society whether they go voting or not and finally the economy, also regarded from both sides - the employer and the employee.

It always was and still is a long and exhausting struggle for women in politics and the economy to be taken seriously. Although women obtain a high profile they often do not reach the same important positions as men do. As we can see in the European Commission - there are eight women and 19 men. Men represent hereby the most important departments.

Due to those facts the thesis of this term paper is: "Due to the modern European policy concerning the gender mainstreaming women are not yet equal players in the economical and political system of the European Union".

This paper aims to show the development as well as the current situation of women in the economy as well as in European politics. Women indeed reach higher level positions in the European politics and large enterprises nowadays and they also have almost the same rights as men have in Western Europe. But they still cannot reach the same degree of responsibility as their male colleagues do. In some areas of politics as well as business the emancipation is already quite sophisticated. Although in Germany we have a woman as a chancellor, there are still a higher number of men dominating economy and politics.