Mind the gap: The power of social norms in gender inequality in Europe—When law is not enough

Gender disparities persist across all EU Member States, despite legal frameworks that formally guarantee equality between women and men. This article explores how deeply entrenched social norms can undermine the efficacy of legal norms, focusing in particular on the domain of gender equality. Grounded in legal theory, the analysis argues that legal noncompliance is often not the result of institutional failure alone, but of conflicting social expectations that remain deeply internalised and largely unchallenged. The first section clarifies the conceptual distinction between the efficacy and effectiveness of legal norms, with attention to their design and conditions of enforcement. The second develops a typology of ways in which social norms obstruct the implementation of gender-equality law, illustrated with examples from EU Member States. The third section provides an analytical overview of how conflicting social norms undermine the efficacy of gender-equality law. Finally, the article adopts a static theoretical lens to examine how law might respond to such conflicts—not by prescribing specific reforms, but by identifying the conceptual conditions under which legal intervention can become both normatively justified and practically feasible.