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Book Reviews The priority assigned by governments to family friendly working policies over recent years has risen. Though these policies are aimed at allowing both men and women to balance family and working life, in practice it is likely to be women who are the principal beneficiaries. Already, the policy debate is moving on, with the emphasis on all of those in employment, regardless of their family responsibilities, being entitled to achieve a proper balance between work and other aspects of their lives. What the content of that policy should be is potentially the subject of intense discussion. At one pole there are the voluntarists who believe that employers and employees are best placed to reach an accommodation free of legislative interference if economic competitiveness is to be safeguarded. At the other are those who believe that further legislation is required to ensure that employees can adequately manage both family and working life. The European Union (EU) has played an important role in framing national debates through promoting an equal opportunity policy. Through the creation of a ‘social dimension’ to its legislative activities, the EU at first promoted equal pay and treatment, and more recently has moved to ‘mainstreaming’ whereby a gender perspective is integrated into all aspects of EU policy-making. Creation of that social dimension has been the product of a challenging policy-making process within the EU that it is detailed throughout this book from a combination of historical, political and legal perspectives. The rigorous critical overview of gender relevant policy and legislation from the Treaty of Rome (1957) onwards – provided in the first three chapters – deserves commendation. The national case studies, especially those on the UK and France, provide some key insights on reconciling EU and national policy. There are, however, areas where a little more detail was required. The introduction makes reference to the difficulties of establishing the social dimension against a background of economic uncertainty and EMU. How the ‘economic dimension’ affected the creation of the social dimension could have been explored more fully. The threats and opportunities of ‘mainstreaming’ are never fully spelt out, nor how in practice this marks a departure from previous approaches. Though the emphasis of the book is on the process of decision-making and the content of policy, more could have been said about the success or otherwise of those policies once in practice, or the utility of ‘soft law’ passed by the EU. Nevertheless, the book provides a treasure chest of detail on gendered policies in Europe.
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