Sexual Equality in an Integrated Europe: Virtual Equality (Europe in Transition: The NYU European Studies Series)

What is special about this account of European integration and gender is that is gives equal weight to what used to be called body politics as to the better known areas of employment rights and reconciliation of work and family. This means that it examines in detail the impact of European level policy and attitudes in areas such as violence against women, trafficking, gay rights, and the institutional treatment of marriage and personal relationships. This begins to give a more rounded picture.

- Catherine Hoskyns, Professor Emerita in European Studies, Coventry University, United Kingdom

Elman offers a much-needed critical appraisal of the EU s gender equality initiatives. With a sharp eye for the gap between rhetoric and reality, she exposes how the language and politics of integration increase expectations for equality but actually allow both the Member States and the transnational polity to avoid responsibility for implementation. By putting the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality in the center of her analysis, Elman reveals how women of color, lesbians, and immigrants fall through the cracks of gender policy-making in Europe, a failure that has implications for all women who place their hopes for equality in the modernization of gender regimes that the EU exemplifies.

- Myra Max Ferree, Martindale Bascom Professor of Sociology and Director, Center for German and European Studies, University of Wisconsin