Towards Gender-Transformative EU Agricultural Policies: A feminist institutional analysis of the Common Agricultural Policy

Agriculture in the European Union created an estimated gross value added of €220.7 billion in 2022. European agriculture is highly dependent on the contribution of women; however, these contributions have not received adequate recognition, in practice, in policy, or in the scientific literature. There remains an important knowledge gap in terms of the diversity roles women play on farms, as well as how they farm. This gap is also reflected in policy and planning, with policies reifying existing gender inequalities.   To understand the gendered implications of EU agricultural policies and to identify feminist policy alternatives, this paper brings together Feminist Institutionalism and Feminist Political Economy to analyse the new legal reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2023-2027. Towards this end, this paper presents a systematic feminist analysis of key regulations comprising the current CAP and three National Strategic Plans (those of Austria, Italy and France) to assess the degree to which the EU’s commitment to gender-mainstreaming manifests in agricultural policy, and to identify opportunities to advance gender-transformative agricultural policies at the level of the EU and member states. The paper contributes not only to theoretical work on a feminist political economy of the EU, but also advances empirical understandings of the gendered implications of the EU’s agricultural policy.