Gender roles and the family under Romania’s post-socialist constitution: Between progress and restraint

Abstract This article contributes to understanding the status of gender equality in Eastern European constitutions and societies. It focuses on Romania, revealing both progress and conservative setbacks. Specifically, the article provides a case study on the construction and evolution of gender roles within the family under the post-socialist Romanian Constitution. It shows that, although state socialism aimed to promote gender equality, it left gender roles within the family largely untouched. These roles began to be more fundamentally challenged—at least under the law—only after the fall of the regime. The Constitutional Court of Romania played an important role in this process through its interpretation of the Constitution, acknowledging early on the socially constructed nature of gender roles and their impact on gender (in)equality within the family and beyond. An exception to this general trend appears in the Court’s recent case law on same-sex marriage. While the Court has generally shown openness to promoting equality between men and women, it has rather displayed restraint when issues of sexual orientation are involved. In this context, the article suggests that the recent conservative turn in Romanian constitutional jurisprudence on gender equality may be driven more by reticence to LGBT+ and intersectional equality than by concerns about equality between men and women per se.