A defence of gender-based affirmative action grounded on a comparison of the United States and of the European Union models

Abstract

This article presents a defence of gender-based affirmative action programmes against its critiques. It starts from an overview of the history and main criticisms addressing affirmative action programmes, and then proposes several arguments against these criticisms. Several rationales are to be found at the core of this article: first, women still face discrimination in regard to access to education and employment. This position relies on the statistical data referring to both the U.S. and the E.U. Second, gender-based affirmative action should be treated differently than race-based affirmative action since women's discrimination on the labour market stems mainly from traditional gender norms largely exerted within the family and exercised through state's family policies (e.g. childcare policies). Third, despite the fact that the article defends gender-based affirmative action against the main critiques, it also argues that this measure alone is an inefficient method to tackle gender inequality. The article concludes that gender-based affirmative action programmes are not effective methods to tackle gender inequality because they address only one part of the problem, namely gender inequality encountered in the public sphere (education and employment), while completely ignoring family and caring responsibilities.