Towards a Feminist Political Economy of European Integration?

Abstract

Papers in this panel draw on Feminist Political Economy (e.g. Acker 2004, Bakker 1994, Young, Bakker and Elson 2011, Elson 1994, Enloe 1989, Roberts 2011, Wöhl 2013) to deepen the theorisation of EU integration, developing feminist analysis of an EU in crisis and to examine the EU’s impact as a gendering actor. Many researchers have suggested that the EU’s fundamentally economic logics limit the transformative potential of its gender equality policies (Bretherton 2002, Hoskyns 2008, Walby 2004, Jacquot 2015), arguing that fiscal conservatism is built into the foundations of the EU through the concept of subsidiarity (Walby 2004). Yet Feminist Political Economy concepts, which shed light on the gendering impacts of economic policies, ideologies and governance structures on many aspects of political and social life (Acker 2004; Bakker 1994; Young, Bakker and Elson 2011, Elson 1994, Enloe 1989, Maier 2011) have not as yet been extensively applied to the theorisation of the EU as a gendering actor, or to feminist approaches to EU Integration (Abels and MacRae 2016, Kronsel 2005), in an explicit way. This gap has two consequences. First, it leaves some core aspects of EU integration under-theorised within Feminist EU studies. Second, it leaves non-feminist accounts of the political economy of the EU uncontested by feminist analysis, leading to the replication of the male-centric biases feminists have long criticised in International Political Economy (Bakker, 2007; Whl, 2014). Papers in this panel draw on elements or concepts from Feminist Political Economy to tackle these gaps and begin the first steps in the development of Feminist Political Economy approaches to EU integration.

Title	Details
Feminist Political Economy, a Welcome Addition to Feminist EU Studies?	View Paper Details
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Gendering Ideational Political Economy in the European Union	View Paper Details
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European Central Bank as Gendered Actor: The New Normal Unconventional Monetary Policies	View Paper Details