The Treatment of Sexual Difference in Formally Egalitarian Democracies

Authors

  • Laura Nuño Gómez

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18042/cepc/rep.174.04

Keywords:

Gender, difference, inequality, democracy, public policies.

Abstract

This article identifies how three factors or implicit principles act in an unnoticed and naturalised way in formally gender equal democracies, and how their action explains the persistence of gender-based discrimination despite the existence of gender equality policies. These three factors are: homogenizing universalism; treating difference as otherness; and considering women’s rights as specific. The last part of the article illustrates the effects of these factors through a concrete example — the management of the Spanish crisis — and thus demonstrates that the rapid increase in the gender gap during this period wasn’t a consequence of the crisis itself, but of these implicit principles when dealing with sexual difference.