Regulating Morality Policies in the European Union: The Influence of Gender-related Explanations

Abstract

Across Europe, morality policies have sparked large political attention in the recent years. Many member states reformed morality issues and adopted more permissive regulatory regimes. Questions of life and death (e.g., abortion or artificial reproduction) or sexuality and sexual behavior (e.g., prostitution, homosexuality, pornography) are popular examples and touch on gender interests to a large extent. This panel invites contributions examining through which channels pro-gender interests entered national decision-making processes of morality issues. In detail, does the strong activity on gender equality at the supra-national level account for the development? Or do favorable national opportunity structures (e.g., strong women’s movement and women’s representation) or the activity of neighboring countries mainly stimulated the translation of pro-gender interests? The panel seeks to bring together papers examining the different channels in order to evaluate the EU’s influence on translating gender-related interests into national policy outputs.