Gendering Europeanisation: Some Contradictions of State - Society Transformation in Europe and Beyond

The concept of Europeanisation refers to transformations of state and society resulting from the processes of European integration. European integration has been informed since 1958 by a notion of gender equality, and has ever since expanded gender justice principles across an always broader range of EU policies and treaty provisions. In this sense, “gendering Europeanisation” is meant to capture the agencies and strategies, the conditions and consequences, and not least the contradictions driving the conflictive processes of making gender norms effective in EU member states. But the project and process of modernizing traditional gender relations entails contradictions. The paper conceives “gendering Europeanisation” as a process of transforming gendered state-society relations within and beyond the EU borders, arguing that this transformative process entails contradictions along several dimensions. These include not only conflicts between norm based Europeanisation and national interests, or religious identities and institutions. Moreover, contradictions arise from incoherent modes of governing across different policy fields. In some cases, contradictions between EU gender sensitive norms and the repercussions of gender insensitive EU policies on the practices of gender relations in state, society and economy, may exacerbate. A case in point are the austerity and structural reform programs adopted by the EU in the wake of the global finance and euro-debt crisis and their impacts on the gender acquis in program countries under surveillance. These contradictions constitute new challenges for further developing a gender reflected, critical and at the same time synthetic approach to Europeanisation research across time and different sectors.