Quality in Gender+ Equality Policies: Final LARG Report: Framing Gender Equality in the European Union and its Current and Future Member States

The aim of this report is to synthetically describe the key contributions of the LARG research activity, assess directions for future analysis based on data collected within the activity, and formulate a set of policy recommendations targeted at achieving better quality gender+ equality policies at the European level based on the findings of QUING. The report proceeds in three steps. First, it describes the research process and the research methodology of the activity, highlighting the innovative contribution made by the LARG methodology to conducting large-scale comparative, qualitative policy research. Second, the report presents the main findings of the activity along the three main research questions proposed for LARG. Chapters 3 and 4 respond to the question: How can gender equality frames in the EU and its current and future Member States be described systematically? Chapter 3 presents a typology of framing gender equality in Europe that cuts across the four policy issues researched by QUING. Chapter 4 applies the typology to look at what are the difference and similarities in framing gender equality across Europe and across the four issues, and propose a typology of countries along these lines. In order to answer to the second research question, Chapter 5 examines the standing and voice of civil society present in the four gender equality policy fields. Chapter 6 answers the research question on the differences, similarities and inconsistencies in gender equality policies between the EU and its Member States based on comparing the LARG Country Reports. Finally, the last section of the report addresses the way forward: how the results, key findings and the collected data can be used for further research. The LARG final report provides good starting points for developing policy recommendations for the QUING project. Recommendations for the projects will be developed based on a reading together of the LARG activity results with WHY, STRIQ and OPERA activity results. The analysis in the LARG final report is based on primary data collected within the framework of the activity, and secondary analysis from country and comparative reports written within the framework of LARG.