Gendering EU Environmental Policy - Political Opportunities for Women's Groups

Substantial research has been done on how gender mainstreaming was implemented in specific policy areas of EU competence. This paper aims to analyse the implementation of gender mainstreaming from the point of view of the transnational women’s groups that interact regularly with the European institutions. The goal is to find out the impact that shifting to a gender mainstreaming approach in the EU has had on the ability of women’s civil society groups to access the European institutions and advance their demands. The expectation is that new political opportunities were opened for women’s groups in new venues since gender has to be considered in all policy fields and across the whole policymaking cycle. Nevertheless, previous research has shown different levels of implementation success of gender mainstreaming in the EU, with the traditionally gender­neutral policies such as trade and environment being the most reluctant to incorporate a gender perspective. Taking the women’s groups specialised in gender and environment as a case study, this paper will analyse whether new political opportunities were opened up for these groups in environmental policy due to gender mainstreaming, and/or whether said groups were able to take up these opportunities or even carve new opportunities up for themselves by interacting with actors in DG Environment. This paper bridges theories from two literatures to create a theoretical framework capable of explaining transnational women’s groups’ interaction with the EU institutions after the adoption of gender mainstreaming. Combining feminist institutionalism, with its insights on how gendered rules affect the behaviour of the actors working within political institutions, and the literature on political opportunity structures for interest groups, the overall aim is to come up with a framework capable of mapping out the opportunities for women’s groups in EU policymaking, and the ability of these groups of taking advantage of them.