Date of Award

2012

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.)

First Advisor

Daniel Halberstam

Second Advisor

Catharine A. MacKinnon

Third Advisor

J. Christopher McCrudden

Abstract

The notion of equality between men and women has, for a long time, played a significant role in the societies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The ideal was particularly important during the period of “real” or “really existing” socialism in CEE. For the CEE socialist regimes, the ideal of equality was an ideological banner that supposedly demonstrated their moral superiority to the “West”. The ideal has gained new importance in recent years, when the CEE post-socialist states had to commit to the protection of the notion of equality between sexes as a condition of their membership in the European Union (EU).

This thesis will analyze the position of EU sex equality guarantees in the CEE post-socialist legal systems. More precisely, it will identify and explain key obstacles to enforcing the recently transposed EU sex equality law in the CEE post-socialist legal systems. In addition, it will provide a critical account of the model of harmonization of the CEE legal orders with the EU sex equality acquis that has been used during the process of accession negotiations between the EU and CEE states.

This thesis will demonstrate that the negotiation model of the pre-accession harmonization of the CEE post-socialist legal orders with the requirements of the EU sex equality acquis did not succeed in identifying the most important barriers to the legal enforcement of EU sex equality guarantees in the post-socialist legal orders. Consequently, we can find profound and disturbing differences in the enforcement of EU sex equality guarantees between the EU and CEE legal orders.

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