Brexit and the Crisis of the European Social Model

The explanations for the UK’s referendum outcome to leave the European Union are nuanced and complex – among them political, economic, and social failure. But is this multiple domestic failure also characteristic of the EU? Concerns with the EU as not (always) beneficial to social progress, whilst underplayed, have entered the Referendum debate. To what extent are these concerns justified? The EU, although primarily market driven, has developed a range of social policies like those codified in the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, evolving further through the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon, as well as numerous EU directives and soft law activities. Similarly, gender equality has been a long-standing commitment and EU’s founding value, dating back to the 1957 principle of equal pay for equal work which kick-started a fruitful process of gender sensitive laws, policies and practices. Yet, today, sixty years later, equality between women and men, as social justice objectives more broadly, remains to be realised. The UK Referendum debates, just like EU policies, have emphasised the economic consequences of Brexit, and less so its potential social impact, even though the economic and the social are so tightly bound. In this paper I trace the recent changes in the European Social Model from a gender perspective, drawing on economic and social aspects of policy developments and focusing on the post-2008 responses to the multiple crises unfolding across the EU. Have gender equality objectives, and social policy more generally, been left behind?