Do women’s policy agencies make a difference for gender equality in work force? This disputed question of feminist literature is rarely examined from a cross-national perspective. Therefore, this paper analyses the relationship between variety of permanent state engagements in gender equality politics and equal employment policies in Europe. It builds on a four-point typology of women’s policy agencies, which scrutinize executive, legislative, judiciary, and other types of state arenas and their effect on equal employment policies. The main aim of the paper is to explain the extent to which comprehensive gender equality polities are a predictor for better employment policies for women among the EU-member states as well as among other states in Europe such as Iceland, Switzerland and Turkey. The theoretical framework combines state feminist and public policy literatures. This study undertakes a comparative analysis of the EU member states and other European states, in order to determine the effect of EU membership on equal employment policies, all else being equal. In addition, this study aims to differentiate the effect of women’s policies agencies (types and forms) on equal employment policies. We use Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as an approach and an analytical technique to do this Middle-N study. Findings suggest that there are different pathways to adoption of equal employment policies. Institutionally inferior gender equality polities go well together with better equal employment policies.
