During the accession period EU has the opportunity to influence a future member state in various political areas. Is gender equality politics one of them? The purpose of this thesis is to explore EUs role in promoting gender equality in Croatia, the latest member who entered 1 July 2013. The theoretical framework consist of two theories, new institutionalism and radical feminism. New institutionalism helps us analyse the tools EU has in order to influence an accession country by dividing them into two themes. Institutions and interest. The theory of radical feminism makes the analyse deeper by deciding the quality of EUs impact on gender equality. The result shows that EU has done a sufficient work making sure Croatia implemented gender equality laws but the laws does not cover all political areas why the overall quality of EUs influence over a member state can be questioned.

The term “social competence” is widely used by organizations in job advertisements, despite the problems of making a unified definition of it. The purpose of this study is to investigate which features the organizations require, why organizations require them and how the assessment is implemented for recruitment. To answer the purpose of this study, eight qualitative interviews conducted with recruiters from four different staffing agencies. Further a literature study was performed to define the concept of “social competence” and its meaning, in order to later connect this to the result. Based on this, the term “social competence” will be further studied using emotional labor and social capital. From the results, it was found that the organizations' demands for features in terms of “social competence” was communication, teamwork, commitment and flexibility. It was also found that the required social features could be linked to the definitions developed through the literature study.