Finding your Right Recipient: Equality CSOs and their Committee Preferences in the European Parliament

Are gender-focused parliamentary bodies the only representatives fostering dialogue between parliament and civil society organisations (CSOs) working on (gender) equality or where else do we find women’s substantive representation? Since 2003, the European Parliament (EP) obliged itself to gender mainstreaming with the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) in charge of monitoring and evaluation. Thus, other committees in addition to FEMM became involved in legislating (gender) equality issues and even sometimes compete with FEMM about competencies. Consequently, different committees offer different points of access to CSOs, and these have to choose the right recipient for their issues, with the effect that the FEMM is not the only worthwhile target for equality policies anymore. Starting from the perspective of "equality CSOs", which I define as those explicitly organised around Article 19, Lisbon Treaty, I investigate which EP committees they target to promote their equality issues. By analysing equality CSOs focusing on different grounds of discrimination (sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age, sexual orientation), I broaden the gender perspective to intersectional aspects and ask who contacts which committee for what reason. I used Qualitative Network Analysis (QNA) embedded in expert interviews to explore links between equality CSOs and EP committees. In this paper, I discuss the legislative and policy scope of committees in the EP as a possible factor steering for whether or not equality CSOs contact a gender-focused parliamentary body like the FEMM committee about gender equality.