The EU’s understanding(s) of gender equality 

The European Union is often considered a global leader in promoting gender equality-  be it internally,  in its enlargement policies, cooperation with other regional organizations, or external policies. Yet, the EU’s efforts to  tackle gender issues in all these directions are not always equally strong and often the meanings of gender equality are stretched and bended, coopted by market logics, or reduced to women considered as a homogenous group. Instead of tackling structural inequalities and taking intersections of gender with class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. sufficiently into account, the EU’s gender strategy focusses often on individual women’s (economic) development. As van der Vleuten points out, this notion of gender equality essentializes women and fails to problematize the very construction of binary gender roles and hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, the EU often declares women’s economic participation to be its ultimate goal, thereby shifting responsibility to the individual and reducing gender equality to an economic end – internally and externally. 

The EU – a normative power in global gender equality? 

The EU’s power to tackle gender equality issues beyond its own borders is often referred to as a normative, soft power that complements its economic power as the biggest market and trade bloc in the world. As van der Vleuten puts it, the EU is not only a merchant anymore bur also a preacher. Yet, the EU’s normative power, for instance in the European Neighbourhood Policy,  is rarely a process of mutual norm making on both sides, but rather the EU setting the norms irrespective of existing practices. Looking at the Gender Action Plan and the EU’s latest attempts to extend the reach of its gender policies in external relations, however, relativizes the EU’s norm-setting power to a certain extent. On the global stage, the EU copies, competes with and complements gender equality policies of other global organizations like UN Women, the World Bank, the OECD, the Council of Europe, and the Istanbul Convention on violence against women and domestic violence. In addition to that, other regional organizations such as ASEAN, UNASUR, or ECOWAS, as key actors in regional governance, have their own policies and understandings of gender equality. But the EU holds on to its developing role as a teacher and preacher of norms around the world, at least as long as it does not conflict with its aspirations as a merchant. 

The EU between Merchant and Teacher 

Van der Vleuten describes power asymmetries between the EU and its partners as an asymmetrical teacher–student relationship, where the EU takes a unilateral position of ‘teaching our gender equality’ to them. This lack of dialogue, and reciprocity lies at the heart of criticism highlighting the neo-colonial approach of EU norm diffusion, van der Vleuten explains. How exactly then does the EU teach and preach and how effective is this with regard to gender equality? The entry point for the EU as a teacher was and still is its identity as an economic power, with deregulation, removal of barriers and free movement of goods, services, capital and people at its core. Its primary identity remains the one of a merchant. However, we can also observe a shift in the EU’s approach after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 when the EU started to develop a secondary identity as a promoter of human rights and an opposition to totalitarian regimes – the Normative Power Europe was born. In its internal and external relations, these identities shape the promotion of gender equality differently: Internally gender related issues, such as LGBTI* rights are still tackled as non-discrimination in the labor market, while externally they are framed as human rights, necessary to comply with.  Yet, the EU’s market integration identity prevails in its external relations. The ultimate aim of trade liberalization then often stands in contrast with gender mainstreaming, which would require heavy state intervention. A truly transformative approach in gender relations would focus on poverty elimination instead of shifting the costs of trade liberalization to unpaid labor. It is this mismatch of underlying logics in EU external relations, van der Vleuten concludes, that explains the relatively weak presence of gender equality concerns in external EU trade policies, and its hitherto confinement to development aid. Whether the promise of the Gender Action Plan, to take gender in all foreign policy activities into account, will be put into practice or stays an empty promise remains to be seen – and to be observed and analyzed by political scientists.