Breaking ‘a Strange Silence’? The Frames of Gender and Climate Change in EU Institutions Reports

The paper addresses the topic of gender and climate change within the political discourses of the EU institutions. It looks at the EU institutions (Member State, Commission, Parliament, and Agency) and analyses their discourse and position in framing the issue of gender and climate change. When analyzing the EU by looking at its institutions, one notices ‘the different ability of the various institutional and individual actors involved to define terms and to determine the agenda.’ (G. Allwood, 2014). The paper focuses on several EU political documents (Reports, Resolution, Council Conclusions and others) in order to identify the frames for the issue of gender and climate change. Specifically, in 2012, the FEMM Committee of the European Parliament adopted a report on ‘Women and climate change’ and held a hearing on the same subject; the Danish Presidency of the Council of the European Union focused on the topic of gender and climate change in the report submitted to the EPSCO Council. These events and several documents could have been the sounds to break the ‘strange silence’ in an environment where there has been a noticeable absence of women as ‘framers and shapers of climate change as a political issue’ and where ‘…climate change is not on the academic feminist agenda.’ (S. MacGregor, 2010). The paper aims to identify how far and for whom the 2012 moment (events and documents) were sized but also missed opportunities.