Five angry men: advocating for and mobilizing EU gender equality law to advance men's rights
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| Author | SOPHIA AYADA |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12455 |
DOI: 10.1111/j ols.12455
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Five angry men: advocating for and mobilizing
EU gender equality law to advance men’s rights
SOPHIA AYADA
Centre de Recherche et de Documentation
Européenes et Internationales, Faculté de
Droit et de Sciences Politiques, Université
de Bordeaux, Pessac, France
Correspondence
Centre de Recherche et de Documentation
Européenes et Internationales, Faculté de
Droit et de Sciences Politiques, Université
de Bordeaux, Pessac, France.
Email: sophia.ayada@eui.eu
Abstract
This article analyses the impact of a men’s rights organi-
zation involved in political lobbying and legal mobiliza-
tion around gender equality issues at the European level
since 1986. Drawing on the as-yet unexplored archival
materials of the Campaign for Equal State Pension Ages
(CESPA), an organization that had a membership of
about 1,200 individuals in the 1990s and later rebranded
itself as PARITY, the article explores the meaning of
European Union gender equality advocacy and mobi-
lization by and for an organization initially composed
exclusively of men based in the United Kingdom. It
argues that anti-discrimination law was successively
used as a strategic tool by this organization to fur-
ther class equality and as a potentially anti-feminist
instrument to defend men’s rights.
1 INTRODUCTION
Is the old despised patriarchy just being steadily replaced, not by equality, but by
increasing feminisation, and what will this hold for the future of both sexes?1
Posed by the members of PARITY(formerly the Campaign for Equal State Pension Ages, CESPA),
a men’s rights organization based in the United Kingdom (UK) that has been actively involved in
political lobbying and legal mobilization before UK and European Union (EU) institutions alike
1CESPA/PARITY, PARITY History 26 March 2019 (2019) 7, at <http://www.parity-uk.org/Reports/PARITY%20History%
2026%20March%202019.pdf>.
© 2023 The Author.Journal of Law and Society © 2023 Cardiff University Law School.
J. Law Soc. 2023;50:455–476. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jols 455
456 JOURNAL OF LAWAND SOCIETY
since 1986, this question reveals the organization’s scepticism towards the legitimacy of feminist
activism. It builds on an implicit understanding of gender relations that is close to that of men’s
rights organizations – namely, that men are discriminated against on the basis of their gender as
much as women, if not more so. This article presents CESPA/PARITYand the scope of its activism,
while exploring the extent to which the organization has drawn on EU lawas a political and legal
means to defend this position.
The role of the EU in the development of the UK gender equality legal framework is incon-
testable. From the very beginning, the equal pay provision of the Treaty of Rome, requiring all
member states to adhere to ‘the principle of equal pay for male and female workersfor equal work
or work of equal value’,2played a direct role in the adoption of the UK Equal Pay Act (EPA) 1970.
The UK’s then-impending accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) required the
incorporation of its acquis communautaire into domestic law, notably including the prohibition
of unequal pay. On the issue of gender discrimination in employment and social security, sev-
eral EEC directives adopted in the 1970s and 1980s raised the UK’s standards of protection. The
European Commission (EC) put additional pressure on UK institutions to provide convincing
guarantees, and an infringement procedure led to the first revision of the Equal PayAct, which at
the time protected equal pay for equal work, though fell short of guaranteeing equal pay for work
of equal value.3The scope of the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) 1975 would also be widened by
an infringement procedure, leading to a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union
(CJEU)4finding the SDA in breach of the Equal Treatment Directive.5
Beyond identifying infringements of primary and secondary legislation by the UK, the CJEU
played a direct role in furthering UK gender equality law throughpreliminary references brought
by political organizations and individuals seeking to achieve social change. The litigation strategy
developed by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) – the UK gender equality body set up
in 1976 – considered the CJEU as a favourable avenue to pursue the development of UK equality
law from the very early days, but especially in the adverse conservative political climate of the
1980s at the height of Thatcherism.6
In addition to public bodies, women’s advocates, either as individual activists or within wider
organizations, participated to a large extent in shaping the European jurisprudence. In this
respect, Rachel A. Cichowski’s comparative research noted that ‘the UK possess[ed] a compar-
atively high degree of legal expertise in the area of gender equality law’, leading to ‘a greater
number of equality law experts who systematically test[ed] the scope of both EU law and their
own national laws by providing real situations for previously vague EU equality laws’.7In the
2Treaty of Rome, art. 119.
361/81 Commission of the European Communities v. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland [1982]
ECLI:EU:C:1982:258.
4165/82 Commission of the European Communities v. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland [1983]
ECLI:EU:C:1983:311.
5Council Directive 76/207/EEC on the Implementation of the Principle of Equal Treatment for Men and Women as
Regards Access to Employment, VocationalTraining and Promotion, and Working Conditions [1976] OJ L39, pp. 40–42.
6C. Barnard, ‘AEuropean Litigation Strategy: The Case of the Equal Opportunities Commission’ (1990) LLM thesis, Euro-
pean University Institute. Her conclusion is also applicable to the legal treatment of transgender persons, whose legal
status as gender equality rights holders under the Sex Discrimination Act was the result of the EOC’sstrategic litigation
using EU law.See Case C-13/94 Pv. S and Cornwall County Council [1996] ECLI:EU:C:1996:170.
7R. A. Cichowski, ‘Women’s Rights, the European Court, and SupranationalConstitutionalism’ (2004) 38 Law & Society
Rev. 489, at 497–498.
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