Lifelong Learning - a Response to a Complex Marketing Strategy Overcoming the Gender Gap

1.INTRODUCTIONEquality between women and men is one of European Union's fundamental values, expected to be integrated into all EU policies and funding programmes (Jourova 2015, 7). Women's integration in both politics and breadwinning was considered by Hernes (1987) to be the fundamental aspect regarding gender equality (Borchorst and Siim 2008, 211). This hypothesis was criticized lately, being considered a too simplistic overview on such a complex theme, being also identified other representative routes to gender equality (Pfau-Ef finger, 1998).In order to "identify priorities for future policy action in the field of gender equality at EU-level", DG Justice and Consumers launched a public consultation on "Equality between women and men in the EU" that received almost 5,000 contributions from across Europe (European Commission 2015, 23). After this high response to the launched consultation, an official document was elaborated - Analysis of public consultation "Equality between women and men in the EU". There were identified six important problems that have to be targeted in the period 2016-2020, as follows:1. Women are still paid less than men for the same work or work of equal value (identified urgency of inequality by 28% of questionnaire's respondents);2. The number of women in positions of power in politics and business is small comparative to men in the same positions (17.1%);3. The prejudice caused by preconceived ideas on women's image and role is still manifested (20.2%);4. Violation of women's rights is present worldwide (17.7%);5. Gender-based violence is still persistent (15.6%);6. There is unequal sharing of household tasks between women and men (11.4%) (European Commission 2015, 23).With the same objective of identifying the most important routes for these problems and the way to equilibrate them, Fraser (1997, 41-66) emphasizes on three visions for achieving gender equity, that are strongly related to the gendered division of care and breadwinning and configuration of market, state and family (Borchorst and Siim 2008, 211). These visions were resumed into three models, as follows:1. The universal breadwinner model has at its basis universalization of the breadwinner role, emphasizing gender sameness. In this context, women and men are both citizen workers with the same responsibilities and engagements, and care duties are transferred to the formal infrastructure of the state.2. The caregiver parity model is keeping care work within the family, yet it reevaluates it through public assistance, i.e. caregiver allowances. In this way, the informal work within the family is tried to be valued and remunerated for assuring the balance between job and personal life.3. The universal caregiver model focuses on gender segregation in order to remove this persistent problem. It proposes a family in which both women and men share the parental responsibilities related to care (informal work) and breadwinning (taking a job).In our opinion, this is the most feasible model from the three above-mentioned ones, especially because it obeys in the most appropriate way the principle of equality of opportunities between men and women as a whole, being able to stay at the core of a healthy, solid and stable family, capable to offer a proper home for children. Another strength point is that is the easiest model to be put into practice on condition of promoting the change of preconceived ideas about the gender role in the family and society. Fraser (1997) also shows a clear preference for the third model, considering that it manages post-industrial dilemmas and changes the equality-difference issues related to men and women in an adequate way. As a result, it is capable to dismantle the gender opposition between care and breadwinner altogether (Borchorst and Siim 2008, 212).Women's multiple roles in the society were concentrated into a typology of gender structures of labor, intimacy, and citizenship in a project entitled Policy Frames and Implementation Problems: the Case of Gender Mainstreaming (MAGEEQ) based on the researches of Walby, Connell, Verloo and Roggeband (Lombardo and Meier 2008, 6). …