CURRENT TRENDS IN EUROPEAN POLICIES ON THE RECONCILIATION OF WORK AND FAMILY LIFE
CURRENT TRENDS IN EUROPEAN POLICIES ON THE RECONCILIATION OF WORK AND FAMILY LIFE

Summary/Abstract: During the last decade, the legislative changes made by the EU in the field of social policies have been, toa great extent, the result of the need to prevalently abide by two fundamental principles: equalopportunities for women and men (at all levels of social life, but especially in what labour market isconcerned) and gender equality, in the context of an escalating necessity of solving social, economic andpolitical issues caused by gender inequality in European societies. An issue with multiple effects inpresent-day social life is the imbalance between professional life and private/ family life, whichnegatively affects the quality of life of both men and women. This study aims at surveying the mostrecent legislative and social policies documents (henceforth, informative documents and legislativedocuments) of the European Union, with regard to the reconciliation of work and private and family life,an acknowledged right of European citizens which calls for a legal framework for the implementation andapplication of the associated measures and solutions. The synthetic analysis of the official documentsundertaken in this paper is the result of a thorough investigation carried out on the European Unionwebsite. The study raises several significant question for the proposed framework, but it comes down tooutlining a number of essential elements present in the documents selected, without advancing answers.The field of work-life balance policy is currently undergoing a transformation process and formulatingdefinitive answers is still untimely.

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