In 1975, the United Nations (UN) established the International Women's Year, and since then, most Western nations have acknowledged gender inequality (then called women's discrimination) as a public issue that deserved public intervention. The strategies and political instruments of these policies have been changing, since the beginning, from the initial focus on sex discrimination (discrimination based on biological differences), and women's discrimination has evolved to focus on gender (discrimination based on the cultural and social consequences of those biological differences).

Today, gender equality has been accepted, at least in theory, by many governments and international organisations around the world and is enshrined in international agreements and commitments (UN, 2002; United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 2003). In the UN document (2002), GM entails bringing the perceptions, experience, knowledge and interests of women, as well as men, to bear on policymaking, planning and decision making and aims to situate gender equality issues at the centre of analyses and policy decisions. In this sense, ‘mainstreaming’ is a process and strategy rather than a goal and brings what can be seen as marginal (gender issue) into the core decision-making process of an organisation (UN, 2002). The implementation of such a common strategy oriented towards gender equality seeks to ensure equal treatment for men and women on the grounds that, by treating individuals equally, discrimination will be eliminated.

In Europe, social policies aiming to promote gender equality have evolved substantially over time. The EU has developed a multifaceted strategy to promote equal opportunities between men and women and has turned this into a unique political system with a set of rules and laws such as specific guidelines, treaties and directives (see Chapter Two). The ‘women's question’ was interwoven into the process of European integration from the very beginning, and the ‘gender issue’ is such a powerful and integral part of the EU narrative today (Kantola, 2010; MacRae, 2010; Abels, 2013) that the European integration process deeply affects the everyday lives of citizens in the member states, including gender relations. Originally founded on Article 119 in the 1957 European Economic Community (EEC) Treaty, the European Community has developed a rich body of gender equality laws since the 1970s, which followed an equal opportunities approach.