Beyond Conditionality: Substantive Representation and Gender Mainstreaming in Italy’s RRP

The COVID-19 pandemic evidenced how policy responses can moderate or exacerbate the gendered impact of crises. This paper investigates the determinants of gender-sensitive policies within the European Union’s pandemic recovery, specifically focusing on the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) under the Next Generation EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). While the RRF represents unprecedented progress by including a gender mainstreaming mandate, its efficacy in delivering gender-sensitive recovery appears limited and heterogeneous across Member States. The analysis considers the multilevel governance of the RRF from a gendered perspective, examining both supranational and domestic drivers of gender mainstreaming. Italy serves as a critical case study: as one of the largest recipients of funds, with persistent economic gender gaps, and relevant gender-related Country-Specific Recommendations (CSRs), it is a most likely case for top-down gender conditionality. However, Italy also possesses a comparably problematic track record for political gender gaps and significant women’s under-representation in decision-making, extending to pandemic management bodies. I assess whether women’s substantive representation - even in contexts of marginalization - is a crucial precondition for gender mainstreaming in economic policymaking. Drawing on secondary data and elite interviews with national and EU policymakers, experts, and advocates, the analysis identifies the contribution of domestic drivers to the heterogeneous success of gender mainstreaming. Findings indicate that despite high expected EU conditionality and domestic gender gaps, gender equality received limited initial salience in the Italian NRRP. Furthermore, gender equality actors were largely marginalized within the executive-led drafting process. Nevertheless, gender-sensitive policymakers, particularly women MPs and experts within public administration, played a key role in successfully advocating for the gender focus of the plan, showing that substantive representation is instrumental in pushing for gender equality even in contexts of under-representation in economic policymaking. The analysis offers a gendered evaluation of the RRF’s governance and contributes to understanding the politics and policies of gender mainstreaming in EU pandemic recovery. More broadly, it challenges previous evidence of irrelevance of substantive representation for fiscal policies, extending existing debates on gendered crisis management and economic governance within the EU.