The Fragmented Inclusion of Gender Equality in AU-EU Relations in Times of Crises

918830PSW0010.1177/1478929920918830Political Studies ReviewVan der Vleuten and Van Eerdewijk
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
Political Studies Review
2020, Vol. 18(3) 576 –591
The Fragmented Inclusion of
© The Author(s) 2020
Gender Equality in AU-EU
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Relations in Times of Crises
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920918830
DOI: 10.1177/1478929920918830
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Anna van der Vleuten1
and Anouka van Eerdewijk1,2
Abstract
Facing internal and external crises, the European Union and the African Union have revitalized
their interregional cooperation. This article theorizes interregional norm dynamics and explores
how, in times of crises, gender equality norms are shaped in interregional relations between the
African Union and the European Union. The question is all the more relevant because gender
equality is shaped very differently in the European Union and the African Union policies. The
African Union has adopted a rather holistic understanding of gender equality, while the European
Union approach is constrained by a market-making logic. Also, since the 2008 economic crisis,
gender equality policies within the European Union seem to stagnate while they seem to expand
in the African Union. Our analysis of core texts shows that at interregional level attention to
gender equality is fragmented. Even though in some respects the African Union gender equality
norms are more encompassing, and gendered effects of crises in the European Union would merit
renewed attention to gender equality, the European Union norms and interests dominate the
agenda. Showing how power asymmetries between and disjointed logics of regional organizations
impact interregional gender equality norms, the article contributes to the scarce literature on
interregional norm dynamics.
Keywords
African Union, crisis, European Union, gender equality, interregionalism, gender mainstreaming
Accepted: 23 March 2020
The relations between the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU) are marked
by the historical legacy of colonialism, a vast asymmetry in capacities and diverging
interests. Unsurprisingly, crisis is always lurking in the background, easily fuelled by
disagreements over issues such as migration, terrorism or financing of peacekeeping mis-
sions (International Crisis Group, 2017). Yet, despite mutual frustration, since 2017, the
1Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2 Royal Tropical Institute, Department of Sustainable Economic Development and Gender, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Anna van der Vleuten, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, PO Box 9108, 6500HK,
Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Email: a.vandervleuten@fm.ru.nl

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Van der Vleuten and Van Eerdewijk
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AU and the EU invest in interregionalism again. Their renewed interest is spurred by an
awareness of their vulnerability in a changing world order and of their internal crises and
weakness due to their inability to respond to major security and economic problems.
These problems have gendered causes and consequences (see AU, 2019; Kantola and
Lombardo, 2017). However, in the EU, since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008,
gender equality policies seem to stagnate, while they have been further developed in the
AU despite its internal crisis. AU and EU gender equality norms also seem to differ.
Against this background, we ask how gender equality norms are (re)shaped in the rela-
tions between the AU and the EU?
Given the paucity of scholarly work on norm dynamics in interregional relations,
this article aims to theorize interregional dynamics and their outcomes regarding gen-
der equality norms by combining insights from scholarship on comparative regional-
ism, norm diffusion and feminist institutionalism. Our conceptual framework is
grounded in the idea that regional organizations have a mission that produces a logic
which structures their policies (Roggeband et al., 2014). The logic also shapes gender
equality norms by enabling easier adoption of norms that fit this logic, compared to
non-matching ones, and by facilitating or thwarting access for specific norm entrepre-
neurs. We argue that at interregional level, norm dynamics will be shaped by the logic
underlying interregional cooperation, and the logics and power (a)symmetry of the
regional organizations involved. Empirically the article is based on close reading of
relevant AU and EU policy documents in order to unpack the gender equality norms
they contain. After briefly introducing the AU, the EU, their respective missions and
logics and their relations, we trace the content of gender equality norms in regional and
interregional documents. The analysis shows that the AU has developed an encompass-
ing gender equality framework, shaped and enabled by an underlying state-led develop-
mental logic. The EU, in turn, has adopted strong gender equality norms, but these
norms are narrowed down by a market-making logic. In its external relations, the EU is
guided by a missionary logic based on its mission as ‘ethical intervener’ (Rutazibwa,
2010), which is disjointed from its trade policies based on a market-making logic.
Interregional policy documents pay fragmented attention to gender equality as stand-
alone norm, but they lack a cross-cutting approach and only address the need for change
in Africa. This is explained by the dominant role of the EU, which reduces African
actors to norm-takers and objects of change, and the intergovernmental character of
interregionalism which hampers access for non-state actors.
Interregionalism and Norm Dynamics – A Conceptual
Framework
Interregionalism is still a fragmented field of study despite the exponential growth of
formal and informal relations between world regions since the 1990s (Ribeiro Hoffmann,
2016). Much attention has been devoted to definitional issues (Hänggi, 2006), but
scholars will agree that AU-EU cooperation is an example of so-called ‘pure interre-
gionalism’, understood as the politics and policymaking by ‘two clearly identifiable
regional organizations within an institutional framework’ (Baert et al., 2014: 5).
Scholarship on ‘pure interregionalism’ is mainly EU-centred. Arguably, this reflects
how the EU was the first regional organization to promote regionalism in other world
regions (Van der Vleuten and Ribeiro Hoffmann, 2013). As a result, some scholars have
adopted an EU foreign policy approach (Hardacre and Smith, 2014) to investigate

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Political Studies Review 18(3)
under which conditions EU external governance is effective, in the sense of success-
fully transferring its rules to third countries and organizations (Lavenex and
Schimmelfennig, 2009). EU norms and its self-image as norm entrepreneur are taken as
given. Hence, this approach seems unfit for dealing with our research question, as it is
unable to address interregional norm dynamics as a two-way process in which the con-
tent of norms is not fixed but renegotiated time and again between both actors. Less
EU-centred approaches from International Relations and International Political
Economy (for an overview, see Ribeiro Hoffmann, 2016), which aim to explain stagna-
tion or progress of interregional cooperation, are not helpful for understanding how
norms are shaped as part of cooperation, either.
We hence draw on comparative regionalism, to allow us to zoom in on norm dynam-
ics in (inter-)regional governance without ‘being trapped in either parochialism or mis-
placed universalism (usually Eurocentrism)’ (Söderbaum, 2016: 33). Amitav Acharya
(2016), pursuing a non-EU-centric perspective, points out that regionalism in the non-
Western world is driven by a quest for autonomy, inspired by anti-colonialism, national
liberation and protection of sovereignty; this is unlike the European emphasis on inte-
gration and the taming of nationalism by supranational institutions. Consequently,
regional governance has developed differently in non-EU and EU institutional settings.
The subsequent question how interregional governance between fundamentally different
regional organizations develops has hardly been addressed yet. Building on Risse (2016),
we assume that norm dynamics at the regional level will influence norm dynamics at the
interregional level. These multilevel processes are driven by actor constellations of norm
entrepreneurs and norm antipreneurs that promote and resist normative change, respec-
tively (Bloomfield, 2016). We assume that actors are enabled and constrained by the
institutional landscape in which they promote and negotiate their interests, and more
particularly by its underlying logic.
The concept of ‘logic’ needs some elaboration. Upon their creation, regional organiza-
tions are endowed with a mission, and in this respect they differ fundamentally from
functional international organizations. The latter focus on a specific policy domain, such
as health, agriculture or trade, in which they aim to improve global policymaking; while
the former are grounded in a (constructed) territorial and cultural entity, with a mission
that binds and drives its member states. This mission constructs the regional organization
and produces a logic as an underlying mode of reasoning structuring its institutions and
policies (Roggeband et al., 2014). The logic of regional governance also shapes gender
equality norms in specific ways, because...