Gender mainstreaming in the European Semester: Governing (women’s) productive and reproductive labour through knowledge-production and policy prescriptions

This paper analyses the practices and policy outcomes of gender mainstreaming in the key tool of the EU’s economic governance, the European Semester. Since its inception, EU institutions have committed to integrating gender perspectives in the European Semester, but a systematic assessment of the outcomes of this commitment has been missing. To understand the effect and role of gender mainstreaming in the European Semester, the paper combines Foucauldian analysis of power and governmentality with feminist political economy. It conceptualises gender mainstreaming and European Semester as technologies of governance that intertwine in disciplining the member states and shaping the productive and reproductive work of the people living in them. The paper asks, how the relationship between the two technologies has changed over time, as the Semester and gender mainstreaming and political commitment to it have evolved, and what this means for the way the EU governs (women’s) productive and reproductive labour in member states. The paper is based on a systematic analysis of a broad document data covering the European Semester Country Reports and Country-Specific Recommendations from years 2011–2023, complemented with interviews with Commission officials. The paper contributes theoretically and empirically to scholarly debates about the gendered policies and practices of the EU’s economic governance as well as gender mainstreaming in the EU and in economic policies and governance processes more broadly.