The Routledge Handbook of Gender and EU Politics

Gabriele Abels, Andrea Krizsán, Heather MacRae, Anna van der Vleuten, Gabriele Abels, Andrea Krizsán, Heather MacRae, Anna van der Vleuten

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781351049931
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This Handbook maps the expanding field of gender and EU politics, giving an overview of the fundamentals and new directions of the sub- discipline, and serving as a reference book for (gender) scholars and students at different levels interested in the EU.In investigating the gendered nature of European integration and gender relations in the EU as a political system, it summarizes and assesses the research on gender and the EU to this point in time, identifies existing research gaps in gender and EU studies and addresses directions for future research. Distinguished contributors from the US, the UK and continental Europe, and from across disciplines from political science, sociology, economics and law, expertly inform about gender approaches and summarize the state of the art in gender and EU studies. The Routledge Handbook of Gender and EU Politics provides an essential and authoritative source of information for students, scholars and researchers in EU studies/ politics, gender studies/ politics, political theory, comparative politics, international relations, political and gender sociology, political economy, European and legal studies/ law.

1

Whose story is it anyway?

Studying European integration with a gender lens

Gabriele Abels and Heather MacRae

‘The historiography of European integration is dominated by legends of great men … For the Community’s supporters they have become saints.’

(Milward 2000, 281)

‘There were no women, and for good reason: at the time they were given very little space in the national political life of the six founding states.’

(Denéchère 2016)

The history of Europe, according to Greek mythology, begins with the abduction and rape of a young Phoenician girl, called Europe, by Zeus, a hypermasculine god who had disguised himself as a handsome white bull. Gender issues and a dominance of masculinity hence have been there from the beginning. However, women have been strangely absent in the making of European integration. Scholars in EU studies almost unanimously point to Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi, Paul-Henri Spaak and other ‘great men’ as the ‘founding fathers’ of European integration. Certainly, these men played key roles in the early development and the evolution of the European project. Unlike Alan Milward, Yves Denéchère (2016) gives a reason: the male dominance of and corresponding oppression (‘little space’) of women in politics and political life. But this image of polity formation without women is incredibly misleading. In fact, women were (and continue to be) very much a part of the European project. So, where are they? Why are they excluded from the formal telling of the EU’s history? Were there any ‘founding mothers’? And if yes, who, and what did they contribute, given the societal restrictions imposed on women?

In gender studies, one common research strategy is to begin by searching for the women and investigating their role in – in this case – political life that has shaped the continent in a remarkable way in previous decades. The focus on European integration as the story of ‘great men’ is an historicization which presents a myth of European integration as a masculine project, it is Zeus 2.0. It is the EU’s ‘his-story’. This perspective is reproduced over and over again. An analysis of standard texts on the evolution of European integration (such as Dinan 2006, Griffiths 2014, or Loth 2015) proves that women are hardly, if ever, mentioned as part of the political elite which has shaped European integration, particularly during the first two formative decades. Denéchère (2016) concedes that there were some women, but relegated to the background and with limited impact: ‘even if a few women can be identified in the shadows of the founders behind the European project. None of these, however, had a deciding role.’ Furthermore, he notes, ‘[t]his initial absence of women can lead one to believe that they did not share in in the construction of Europe’; but ‘what was true of the 1950s and 1960s, was no longer the case from the beginning of the 1980s’ (Denéchère 2016). In fact, integration as a purely male project, was not true of the 1950s and 1960s. Rather, one could argue that the contributions of women have been ‘written out’ of out the history of integration. For example, Marga Klompé, largely forgotten by EU texts was the first woman to join the 78 male members of the ECSC Assembly constituted in 1952. She was appointed rapporteur for the Assembly’s opinion on the Messina Declaration, which laid down the foundations for the Treaties of Rome. The inequalities and difficulties with the lack of women’s voices did not go unnoticed, even in the 1950s. Madame Ledru, a Belgian expert participating in the elaboration of a European social policy, observed

that in fact it is rather astonishing that, for a problem which is of such big interest for women, I am here the only woman present. And I am not sure whether this is always a good thing, because I believe that it would be useful that in discussions on equal pay women should be represented with a much more comfortable majority.

(cited in: Commission 1959, V/4847/59, 203)

Ledru’s role, and the roles of Klompé and other women have been downplayed or rendered invisible in most accounts, contributing to the ‘dominant masculinity’ of the contemporary EU. We should not overlook these contributions again. Indeed, for the more contemporary period, some women are frequently mentioned as ‘shapers’ of European integration: for the 1980s this is especially true of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who is often strongly criticized for her harsh anti-deepening stance; since 2005, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is widely seen as shaping Europe’s future (Mushaben 2017, 161–213). Merkel has been depicted as both demon and saviour of Europe Madame Non and Frau Europa (Madam Europe) in the Euro crisis. However, these women are seen as central to the EU’s trajectory largely by virtue of their role as national politicians acting on the EU stage. Very few women are recognized for their roles as European actors.

One telling, although hopefully not representative example, is Desmond Dinan’s (2006) account of the origins and evolution of European integration. In the index to this standard textbook the names of 165 men – politicians as well as academic scholars – are mentioned, but only four (!) women: besides Thatcher and Merkel he lists only Miriam Camps, an economist who was involved in the development of the Marshall Plan, and Mariann Fischer-Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development (2004–2009). This grossly imbalanced example illustrates a case of what Jenson (2008) has called ‘writing out’ women and their contributions – in this case not only out of European history and politics, but also out of academic EU studies. Anna van der Vleuten (2007), in contrast, lists 20 women and 32 men in the index of her feminist account of the history of gender equality in the EU. Quite a different story. There are at least two dangers involved in the masculine representation of history. Not only does it present an inaccurate picture of the process of integration, it does so without critiquing, or even recognizing the ways in which this imbalance continues to shape a masculine bias into the study of European integration.

There are other versions of this narrative, although they are certainly less prevalent. The European history expert Maria Pia Di Nonno has worked on the prehistory and early days of European integration. In contrast to Dinan’s historical account, she has identified at least nine women who deserve the honorary title ‘founding mothers’. Di Nonno’s list (2019) includes, for example, the French journalist, peace and women’s rights activist Louise Weiss (1893–1983), who – using a male (!) pseudonym – founded a newspaper L’Europe nouvelle in the inter-war period (see also Denéchère 2016; EPRS_BRI(2019)642289_EN). The newspaper chronicled the political, economic and social life in Europe, and worked towards creating a peaceful and unified Europe, including support for the League of Nations, Franco-German reconciliation, and continental disarmament. Weiss later became a member of the European Parliament (MEP). As the oldest MEP, she gave the inaugural speech of the first-ever directly elected Parliament – and then handed over to the European Parliament’s first-ever female president: Simone Veil (see below). Weiss’ contribution – as well as Veil’s – is acknowledged by the European Parliament which named buildings after these two ‘founding mothers’. The European Parliament building in Strasbourg is called the Louise Weiss Building, and the public space in Brussels between the Spinelli Building and the Parlamentarium (i.e. the European Parliament’s visitor centre & exhibition), is called the ‘Simone Veil Agora’. Denéchère (2016) even concludes: it seems that the ‘European Parliament is an institution that has been much more favourable to the engagement of women in the European project’ (Denéchère 2016). In contrast to this prominent recognition, in mainstream academic textbooks Weiss is never, and Veil hardly ever mentioned. Indeed, they share this fate of academic and public negligence with numerous other women who have shaped Europe’s fate.

These short analyses demonstrate that if we apply a gendered lens to explore the ‘her-story’ of European integration, we will ‘discover’ women coming from different walks of life, who have contributed in a variety of different ways, to the making of Europe. We would furthermore illuminate different events, power relations and individuals, and highlight alternate patterns and trajectories of European integration than mainstream accounts tend to acknowledge. As such, a gendered reading can provide a rather different account of the progress in and promoters of the European project. It goes without saying that in this short introduction, we cannot provide this kind of comprehensive gendered re-inspection of the evolution of what is today known as the European Union. This would require – and deserves – in-depth herstorical studies. But what we can do, is at least draw attention to the existing imbalances and biases and illuminate the importance and urgency of a gendered approach.

For this endeavour, this chapter begins with a discussion of the mainstream understanding of integration, which tends to see the evolution of the European project in the 20th century as a progression of ‘fits and starts’ along a generally linear path forward, yet always prone to crisis or setback. The general interpretation tends towards an understanding that integration has deepened as a result of crises – and continues to do so in the light of the ongoing ‘poly-crisis’ to which the Covid-19 pandemic and its radical effects further contribute. The second section briefly considers some feminist recounts of European integration. This demonstrates that a different lens can shift our understanding of the EU’s progression. When retelling the EU history through a gendered lens, we need to contextualize key events in European integration within the broader social context of a growing and changing women’s movement and both individual and collective action. This shows how reconceptualizing the historical narrative can change the overall story. The final part of this chapter gives an overview of how this Handbook is organized. It explains what gendering the EU and EU politics means and entails and which key and cross-cutting questions and perspectives have guided this Handbook. The Handbook adopts an approach, common in gender studies and which represents the move from women’s studies to gender studies. This involves not only looking for women and adding them in, but gendering ‘the story’ of constructing Europe. By this, we mean to investigate, with a gender lens, the ways in which the institutions (polity part) and the political processes (politics part) work, and analyse the potentially gendered output and outcomes for a range of old and new EU policies.

Some remarks on mainstream history

By and large, mainstream accounts perpetuate and deepen the masculine hegemonic narrative and offer an incomplete history of the continent and its re-ordering post-1945. Clearly, we cannot recount the full history of European integration over the past 70 years here. Yet, a key finding is that from the very beginning, the process has been strongly affected by crisis. Some would even argue that crisis is constitutive and works as a motor of integration. In this sense, Europe is the crisis (see Fossum and Menéndez 2014) – a crisis that has been accelerating in the last decade, leading to what is today often called a ‘poly-crisis’, i.e. multiple crises, existing in a parallel and often overlapping manner and shaking up the European project.

The predecessors of what is known today as the European Union, were established in the 1950s and developed directly out of the experiences of World War II. At the time of this writing (summer 2020) the famous Schuman plan, outlining a proposal to create a body with collective authority over aspects of the European economy, celebrates its 70th anniversary. From this plan, proposed on May 9, 1950, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) emerged. The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1951 and enacted in 1952, brought together the six founding member states of France, Germany, Italy and the three Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) in a joint economic framework. Following a failed attempt to establish a European Defence Community in 1954, the states took the steps to realize further integration through the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC, or frequently, Euratom) in 1957. We have all seen the famous picture of the signing of those two treaties in Rome on March 25, 1957: dozens of black suits worn by (old) white men. What is wrong with this picture? There is not even a single woman. This missing representation of women is emblematic. Even the ‘family pictures’ of contemporary European summits that bring together the heads of states and governments of the current 27 member states are male-dominated. Yet, this is not the full story, and writing women back in, as we will illustrate below, adds important insights.

Two key concepts that characterize the process of integration since the 1950s are deepening and widening. The first, deepening, refers to increasing transfer of competences from national to supranational level, the construction of stronger common institutions, and an ‘ever closer Union’ – as the Treaty puts it – with remarkable effects on European societies. This incremental transfer of powers and deepening of integration has progressed from economic integration to increasingly social and political forms of integration. The EU became a ‘success story’ in driving integration forward to previously unknown territory, involving an expanding body of economic, social and environmental regulation, and even the introduction of a common currency several decades later. The second concept, widening, refers to an ever-growing Union in terms of membership. Over the course of 70 years, the Union has grown from the initial six founding member states, through successive waves of enlargement to 28 member states. Most recently, due to Brexit (UK withdrawal from the EU), membership has dropped back to 27 as of 2020. In terms of both widening and deepening, 1992 is often held up as a pivotal moment, with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty representing a ‘relaunching’ of the European project. The Treaty involved the creation of the Common (Internal) Market, the establishment of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) with a common currency – the Euro –, and a move towards increased political union with new policy pillars such as Common Foreign and Security Policy and cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs. 1992 marks an important point as states opted to move forward with a concurrent process of deepening integration through the Maastricht ‘relaunch’ and simultaneously preparing to widen the Union and welcome the post-Communist states to the EU in what was sometimes celebrated as a ‘family reunion’.

Neither deepening nor widening have been straightforward processes and they are, in fact, closely interlinked. The process of gradual, yet not linear growth and intensity has been both the product and the source of crisis and contestation. The ambiguity around the ultimate goals and aims of integration, the so-called finalité politique, has led to intense debate among both politicians and academics. The nature of the Union itself has changed tremendously through both widening and deepening, with growing heterogeneity and disparities among the member states leaving a mark on politics, law, economics, and even on societies. Gender relations and national gender regimes (see von Wahl in this volume) have not remained untouched by these developments. From a gender perspective, as we will illustrate later, the linearity and continuity of integration as a success story is somewhat more ambivalent.

Actually, these historical accounts are fraught with problems. First, the image of and focus on the ‘founding fathers’ can be called a ‘myth’ (Milosevic 2018). They are represented as a ‘group of wise leaders [who] had a vision and came up with a plan on how to rise Europe from the ashes of the Second World War’, while ‘women were not in the spotlight, nor in the narrative about Europe’s re-birth’ (Milosevic 2018). While certainly a number of politicians were critical for the ‘uniting of Europe’ (Haas 1958) – those often referred to as ‘founding fathers’ – social groups and support structures also played an important role in ‘getting the job done’. Second, much of the historiography of European integration is, first and foremost, a story of ‘big’, history-making events and ‘high politics’, often focussing on treaty ratifications. This tendency to focus on big events – inter-state bargains achieved in night-long, hard negotiations among national leaders – results in a skewed vision of the process as one dominated by men. When we place treaty reforms, and the heads of state and government as well as national diplomats that negotiate these, at the centre of our vision, we prioritize male agency, often at the expense of other actors. Important players in the background, frequently women, are rendered invisible in this account of treaty reform. Certainly, for much of the European Union’s history, men have been the de facto leaders, as most of the state leaders have been male. But they are not the only important actors. It is only in recent years that we see more women in executive leadership in the member states – as heads of states and governments and as members of national governments – and in EU institutions. Only recently do we see more women heading key EU institutions such as the Commission, the European Central Bank and the External Action Ser...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations and acronyms
• 1 Whose story is it anyway?: Studying European integration with a gender lens
• Part I Gendering the EU: Theoretical perspectives
• Part II Gendering the EU polity and structures of governance
• Part III Gendered politics in the EU
• Part IV Gender equality and EU policies
• Part V A gender lens on key issues and debates
• Index