Gender Equality Mythologized? Depoliticization, Discourse, and Policymaking in a Post-Crisis European Union

Abstract

With the 2008 financial crisis, the European Union (EU) was launched into what has become over a decade of ongoing crises that has included the subsequent emergence of the refugee crisis, Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic, amidst austerity policies, reform efforts, and shifting political landscapes. Under these conditions of "polycrisis" the basis of the European project has been called into question, as recovery and reform efforts have dictated political priorities and constrained institutional capacity for fourteen years. The challenges that crises have posed to the EU's legitimacy draws attention to the foundational mythologies that hold the polity together and establish the uniquely "European" values and identities that undergird European integration. Gender equality has been continuously represented among these "European values" fuelled by the EU's longstanding commitments, however the scaling back of social provisions under the guise of crisis management prompted challenges to the EU's reputation as a gender equality leader. The election of the first woman Commission president in 2019 provided some optimism for gender actors and this dissertation interrogates the EU's presentation of its own gender equality project from 2009-2022 by investigating the "myth" of "gender equality" in the EU. "Mythologies," represent the norms and stories of the polity and are constitutive dimensions of politics, which is demonstrated in this study through the analysis of EUlevel discourse. This dissertation focuses on the intra-discursive functions that "myths" serve in EU politics and policymaking, drawing attention to the disconnect between active and celebratory commitments. By employing different qualitative methods and engaging in discourse analysis, this project investigates the mobilization of "foundational myths" in both overarching EU programmes and targeted gender policies. It then analyzes the effects of mythologizing on the politicization (or depoliticization) of gender equality. This dissertation argues that to legitimate its supranational polity in "polycrisis," the EU discursively mobilizes mythic commitments to "European values" in place of substantive efforts. It finds that the repeated representation of gender equality in the "common sense" of "European values" obscures and naturalizes its secondary status as a political priority and, as such, currently renders gender equality "mythologized" in the EU.