The main purpose of this study is to demonstrate the impact o f the European Union on women’s labor market advancement in Southern Europe. This study rvill focus on the changes (if any) that Southern European women have experienced and whether the European Union has suflBciently pursued a policy toward helping women o f the South. This study will show how certain groups of women remain particularly disadvantaged, such as women in the rural environment in Southern Europe, and how progresses made for women are uneven across the Member States, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. The concluding part of this study will show how, within the EU, definitions of employment and unemployment and the discussion of the nature and extent in official and unofficial documents and/or reports are based on particular experiences of work, derived from the North rather than from the South of the EU, and from men’s rather than women’s patterns o f integration into the labor market. In addition, a wide range o f local or regional research on women’s economic activity lies outside the areas which statistics measure and evaluate. This is one of the reasons why European policies have thus far been ineffective. Therefore, women o f Portugal, Greece and Spain, to whom this study is focused, do not pertain to the framework on which the EU is constructing. In the fiirther process o f European unification the impact on women in Southern Europe does not look optimistic, unless priority is given to a reinforcement o f its social policy and to a true policy of equal opportunities for women’s labor market advancement in Southern Europe