"Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a new policy style within the E.U., characterised by voluntary policy transfer between member states and soft policy instruments including exchange of best practice, targets, benchmarking and national league tables. This article examines how these methods have been used by gender mainstreaming advocates and evaluates the impact of this strategy to-date upon E.U. policy-making procedures and outputs. It is argued that mainstreaming has provided new opportunities for feminists to influence the E.U. policy agenda, but that the impact of mainstreaming varies between sectors and member states." (Quoted from paper)