The Hermeneutics of Gender Equality Law in Europe

Abstract

This paper explores how European gender equality law communicates in the contemporary democratic public sphere. It will analyse several gender discrimination cases of the European Court of Human Rights as well as the Court of Justice of the European Union and how judgements of these courts communicated and defined the concept of gender equality, and redefined and broadened this concept from early cases such as Abdulaziz, Cabales and Balkandali v The United Kingdom to more recent cases such as Land Brandenburg v Ursula Sass and Leyla Sahin v Turkey. Trying to answer how the law communicates, this paper will show that the law is not a static and immutable system, independent of historical, political, social and cultural contexts. On the contrary, the legal system represents a dynamic structure, which is continuously revised, and which is socially, historically and politically constructed.