Framing Gender Equality in the European Union Political Discourse

In the last decade, the European Union (EU) approach to genderequality has broadened to new concepts, such as gender mainstreaming,and new issues, such as "family policies", "domestic violence",and "gender inequality in politics". However, the frame analysisof policy documents in these new areas shows, first, that eachissue has developed its own particular features, and, secondly,that the broadening of the EU-political discourse on genderequality has not led to a deeper framing of the issues in termsof gender equality. The lack of EU competence in these areas,the status of the policy documents, and differences in the actorshaving a voice and being referred to in the documents are proposedas possible explanations for its framing.