United in Diversity and Trapped in a Paradox: (Il)legal Gender Equality in the EU Legal Documents and Their Translations

The promotion of equal opportunities for women and men aimed at the elimination of all kinds of discrimination against women has become increasingly important worldwide. Nowadays, gender equality is a of the concerns for international organisations, national governments, feminist groups and academics, thus permeating all areas of action on behalf of most organisations, including the European Union (EU). Gender equality is undoubtedly a core value of the EU and many directives, laws, regulations, to mention a few, have been issued in this respect to eliminate inequalities in an attempt to promote the equal treatment of women and men. Nevertheless, despite having obtained equal rights and equal status in most countries and in several fields, women are still being discriminated against in many areas, including language. The most remarkable issue, in this respect, is that gender bias can be detected in some of the EU legal documents and their relative translations into other languages, thus showing inconsistency, incoherence and paradoxes. Many questions arise from these considerations, such as how has the use of gender-neutral language been ensured? Why do some EU legal documents and some of their translations incoherently use the masculine form? The aim of this paper is to show how gender discrimination can paradoxically be found through the use of sexist language in some EU legal documents and their translations. Three languages will be compared in this respect, such as English, Italian and Spanish. The theoretical part and hypotheses will be supported by examples taken from the EU website and further commented on. This work is part of an ongoing research project and, as such, only a few examples will be provided.