"Work-life balance/reconciliation policy emerged as a separate area of EU social policy in 1997, when it was integrated into the European Employment Strategy under the equal opportunities pillar in order to increase female activity and employment rates. It gained prominence with the Lisbon Strategy and the Barcelona targets for childcare, but fell into the background during the Great Recession. Its revival coincides with the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) and its first implementation Directive on Reconciling Work and Family Life. Most feminist scholars and activists have criticised this policy for implicitly addressing only working mothers and ignoring the unequal division of unpaid care work between women and men. The EPSR represents a turning point on this issue, while the current European Gender Equality Strategy, adopted in March 2020, sets the closing of the gender (unpaid) care gap as one of its objectives. The Covid-19 pandemic raised social awareness of the centrality of care to social reproduction and triggered in its aftermath the adoption of a European Care Strategy, which has been inspired by the feminist economic proposal for mass social investment in a “care economy” based on the recognition, revaluation and redistribution of care work among women and men and the adequate remuneration and representation of care workers. The European Care Strategy is clearly an advancement from an EU gender equality and social policy perspective. However, it falls short of a more ambitious initiative for a “Care Deal for Europe” next to the “European Green Deal”, while its implementation would be hampered by a return to austerity policies at the Member-State level in the coming years."

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