Slipping Off or Turning the Tide? Gender Equality in European Union’s External Relations in Times of Crisis
| Author | Anna van der Vleuten,Natalie Welfens,Hanna L Muehlenhoff |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920929624 |
| Published date | 01 August 2020 |
| Date | 01 August 2020 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920929624
Political Studies Review
2020, Vol. 18(3) 322 –328
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920929624
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Slipping Off or Turning the
Tide? Gender Equality in
European Union’s External
Relations in Times of Crisis
Hanna L Muehlenhoff1, Anna van der Vleuten2
and Natalie Welfens3*
Abstract
The European Union has faced several crises in the past decades, including the economic and
financial crisis, Brexit, a migration, climate change and security crisis, and the latest COVID-19
crisis. In this context, feminist scholars have shown how the causes and effects of the economic
and financial crisis are strongly gendered. Generally, this literature suggests that crises can open a
window of opportunity for gender considerations but may also promote policies which exacerbate
gendered inequalities. Yet, the impact of crises on the attention to gender equality in European
Union’s external relations is still unknown. This is surprising, as the European Union has promised
to mainstream gender in all external policies, and understands itself to be a normative power and
gender actor in world politics. This Special Issue analyses how the European Union’s identification
of crisis and its policy responses to crisis in different external policy fields are gendered. The
introduction situates the Special Issue within existing scholarship, theorises the central concepts
of this Special Issue – crisis, gender (equality) and the European Union identities – and highlights
how the different contributions advance our understanding of how gender figures in European
Union’s external relations in past, current and future times of crisis.
Keywords
crisis, European Union, European Union’s external relations, gender, identity, intersectionality
Accepted: 4 May 2020
Since 2008, the notion of crisis has proliferated in European political and academic are-
nas, referring to Europe’s economic and financial crisis, its migration or refugee crisis, its
legitimacy crisis, an emerging security crisis and, currently, the health crisis related to the
1Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
3Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
*Authors are in alphabetical order.
Corresponding author:
Hanna L Muehlenhoff, Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam, PO Box 1619, 1000 BP
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: h.l.muehlenhoff@uva.nl
929624PSW0010.1177/1478929920929624Political Studies ReviewMuehlenho et al.
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
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