Introduction

The recent accessions to the European Union brings new questions about the aspirations of mothers in the new CEE member states. Will there be support in Europe for their social agenda, for more collective responsibility for children? Will women's employment be supported in quality as well as quantity? Will there be support for gender equality in households and policies to allow work–life balance for both men and women? What are the implications of European Union enlargement for gender equality in the new CEE member states?

As argued in Chapter Two, the merging of CEE countries within the European Union brings together gender regimes with contrasting histories and trajectories. The male breadwinner model of household and social policy has dominated most of Western Europe with, in the 1960s and 1970s, Scandinavian countries turning away from it and leading towards a dual earner model. But most of Western Europe remains at a one-and-a-half earner norm at best, and far from gender equality in income, power or respect. In contrast, CEE countries have had social policy support for a dual earner system for the best part of half a century. Under communism, despite the lack of civil society, a women's movement and a traditional division of labour within households, gender equality could be seen as one of the strengths of social policy in these countries. These systems have been battered by the transition from communism, which has brought unemployment and reductions in state support for childcare and families. We have argued that the claims of increasing gender inequality and retraditionalisation towards a male breadwinner model have been overstated. Nevertheless, state support for the dual earner model has been challenged and reduced in the context of transition from communism and the development of markets. Can the dual earner traditions of CEE countries survive another transition into a European Union, which is also a common market? Will the result be more gender equality or less, especially in the eight new member states whose history is of communist dual earner regimes, but also in the European Union at large?

The widening of Europe has also been discussed more in terms of economics, and where there is a high public profile for social concerns it has centred on migration rather than other aspects of social policy.