Based on participant observation data, this paper considers the experiences of single mothers seeking employment in Brno, exploring how their efforts to live in the modes suggested by the EU 2020 Strategy highlight deep-seated, gendered contradictions between the economic and social goals of the European Union. Neoliberal aspects of these goals are increasingly promoted by the EU as a perceived solution to the recent economic crisis.
Through the European Social Fund, via civil society, the EU pursues the ‘social inclusion’ it identifies as both a cause and effect of higher employment rates. The single mothers I worked with were part of such an arrangement, to make them ‘employable’. These women’s circumstances present challenges to the ‘work as panacea’ agenda, exposing issues with the EU’s instrumental pursuit of gender equality, particularly in a post-socialist context. Arguably welfare austerity, another aspect of a neoliberal ‘pro-employment’ agenda, contributes more to their social exclusion.
