on the history of women’s rights in the European Union. She highlights how individual women had the power to spark much bigger action, from legal struggles to community activism:
The EEC legislative framework, and since 1993 the European Union framework, have encouraged and inspired individual participation, albeit by using judicial instead of political means. Court rulings from the Defrenne trilogy are still cited today as the landmark rulings that established a woman’s right to equal treatment in the workplace.
So like the federal government in the United States, the EU and its court system have been an instrumental vehicle for advancing women’s rights. Showing the importance of indirect democracy outside the electoral arena, citizens have played a decisive role in paving the way for social policy deliberations to enter Community law via filing complaints and lawsuits using EU law.
This pathway for social change—individuals using legal avenues and precedents—have continued throughout subsequent decades. In 2000, the political debate and heightened public awareness following the CJEU’s famous Kreil decision led Germany to change its constitution to enable women to work in the armed forces. Again, it was one woman, the electronic technician Tanja Kreil, who initiated the change when her application was rejected by the Bundeswehr, the German army.