Despite having adopted the anti-discrimination rules and gender mainstreaming principles required in the acquis communautaire, structural and symbolic gender inequalities pervade institutionally and discursively in Polish politics. The question remains: what happens with the gender equality policies after the formal adoption in East-Central European EU member states? On the example of Poland and taking into account the specific historic legacies, I argue that the democratization and the Europeanization processes that culminated in EU accession, have only been a case of swapping one type of proclaimed prima facie gender equality policy for another. The acceptance, transposition into national law, and implementation of the EU acquis concerning gender equality have been merely skin-deep and, once codified, seemed to be a ‘done deal’ that needed no further work. While EU accession brought expectations in terms of gender equality and the effects of gender mainstreaming both from the Polish (feminist) side as well as from the EU institutions, it has not yet been fully researched why Poland (and the region as a whole) is falling back in terms of progress on gender equality implementation.
My paper is an attempt to fill in a part of this gap. From the early transformation rejection of gender parity (as tainted by ‘communism’), which meant on the one hand smaller numbers of women in parliament, through the peak of hopes in Europeanization around the accession to the EU, and trailing down to significant ultra-conservative and nationalist backlash in the recent years, the plenipotentiary for gender equality position in the Polish government reflects the trends in local and regional politics. By looking at its evolution and workings (since its creation in 2001, through its multiple re-brandings, until the latest upheavals), I trace the implementation of gender equality policies and show the complex position of an East-Central European state in the processes of Europeanization and soft norm diffusion. I specifically discuss the current Polish parliament and government, which have actually been successfully mainstreaming anti-gender equality rhetoric. I argue that the ambivalent position of the previous governments in terms of their commitment to implement gender equality policies has paved the way for the current dismantling of the already weak institutional guarantors of anti-discrimination and equality, using the ‘anti-gender campaign’ that later became the name of the game when it came to family and welfare politics with the new right wing-dominated parliament. Despite significant and important activities undertaken by the subsequent government plenipotentiaries for equality, the position was often seen as a token for the EU and a ‘nice’ addition to politics that showed how progressive the government was. In spite of the commitment and work, the plenipotentiaries never managed to go beyond the rigid political divisions of Polish post-transformation politics.
