This article seeks to evaluate the legal developments of the European Community in its attempts to eliminate sex discrimination and inequalities in treatment between men and women and to analyse, from a socio-legal perspective possible inefficiencies of the Community’s primary and secondary legislation on the issue. In the light of the Intergovernmental Conference and the European Community’s aspirations to become a fullfledged federal state, the social dimension of European Integration acquires relativeimportance from a legal, political as well as economic perspective.
In a second follow-up article the authors will attempt to provide a comparative analysis of the evolution of equality law and policy and the social parameters in labour relations between men and women that exist in two alrerady established federal states, the United States of America and Canada.
International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations