Kantola lombardo (eds ) gender and the economic crisis in europe; politics, institutions and intersectionality (2017)

We have, instead, focused on three issues that, in our view, significantly capture the political dimension of the crisis from gender perspectives: i austerity politics and pol-institutio

Series Editors

Johanna Kantola

Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland

Sarah Childs

Professor of Politics and Gender University of Bristol

Bristol, United Kingdom

European Conference on Politics and Gender (ECPG) in June 2015 in Uppsala, Sweden The original idea for the book series was envisioned by the series editors Johanna Kantola and Judith Squires at the first ECPG in Belfast in 2009, and the series was officially launched at the Conference

in Budapest in 2011 In 2014, Sarah Childs became the co-editor of the series, together with Johanna Kantola Gender and Politics showcases the very best international writing It publishes world class monographs and edited collections from scholars - junior and well established - working

in politics, international relations and public policy, with specific ence to questions of gender The 15 titles that have come out over the past five years make key contributions to debates on intersectionality and diversity, gender equality, social movements, Europeanization and institu-tionalism, governance and norms, policies, and political institutions Set

refer-in European, US and Latrefer-in American contexts, these books provide rich new empirical findings and push forward boundaries of feminist and poli-tics conceptual and theoretical research The editors welcome the highest quality international research on these topics and beyond, and look for proposals on feminist political theory; on recent political transformations such as the economic crisis or the rise of the populist right; as well as pro-posals on continuing feminist dilemmas around participation and repre-sentation, specific gendered policy fields, and policy making mechanisms The series can also include books published as a Palgrave pivot

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EditorsGender and the Economic Crisis in

Europe

Politics, Institutions and Intersectionality

Gender and Politics

ISBN 978-3-319-50777-4 ISBN 978-3-319-50778-1 (eBook)

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Johanna Kantola

Department of Philosophy, History,

Culture and Art Studies

University of Helsinki, Finland

Emanuela Lombardo Department of Political Science and Administration 2

Faculty of Political Science and Sociology

Madrid Complutense University, Spain

It has been a real pleasure to put together this collection of chapters on the politics of the economic crisis in Europe from a gender perspective The economic crisis and the way that it has been framed in Europe has very much shaped our own lives and research on gender, politics, equality policies and the European Union for nearly a decade now Our greatest thanks go to our fellow researchers and authors of the chapters of this vol-ume Leah Bassel, Rosalind Cavaghan, Anna Elomäki, Akwugo Emejulu, Roberta Guerrina, Sophie Jacquot, Heather MacRae, Ana Prata, Elaine Weiner, Stefanie Wöhl and Ania Zbyszewska Thank you for all the hard work you put into the chapters, for revising and rewriting them according

to our suggestions and for bearing with us in relation to our never-ending requests!

This collection grew out of our discussions on the topic and our research collaboration in Madrid in the winter of 2015 when Johanna was Visiting Scholar at Madrid Complutense University and we were working

on our ‘other book’, Gender and Political Analysis We are very grateful

to Rosalind Cavaghan and Sylvia Walby not only for sharing their path- breaking research and talks on the crisis with us but also because they were pivotal in putting together and discussing panels and workshops on the gendered impact of the economic restructuring in the EU in which many of the chapters of the book were presented Particularly inspirational was the workshop organized by Rosalind at the University of Nijmegen

‘Feminist Politics in Times of EU Austerity: Challenges and Strategies

in a New Political Landscape’ 17–18 September 2015, which brought together scholars and activists working on gender and the crisis in the EU. 

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the participants and to Mieke Verloo in particular for her inspirational critical thinking about the times we are in, support, enthusiasm and friendship.

Other important and inspirational moments included the European Conference on Politics and Gender (ECPG) in Uppsala in June 2015 and

we thank the conveners of the ECPR Standing Group on Gender and Politics Isabella Engeli, Elisabeth Evans and Liza Mügge for the huge work that they put into coordinating the Standing Group and organiz-ing these conferences, which continue to provide important platforms for discussing feminist research The book also benefited from the ECPR Standing Group on EU (SGEU) Conference in Trento, in June 2016, the workshop on Gender and the Economic Crisis that Andrea Krizsan organized in Budapest in September 2016, the seminar that Ainhoa Novo organized in Bilbao in May 2013 on ‘Gender Equality Policies in Times of Crisis’, and the CRonEM Conference on ‘Sex, Gender, and Europe’ that Roberta Guerrina organized at the University of Surrey in June 2014 We are also very grateful to the anonymous reviewer of this book proposal for the extremely supporting and helpful comments we received and to

the editors and anonymous reviewers of Feminist Theory for their

con-structive comments on a paper that articulates the ideas we develop more

extensively in the book Emanuela also thanks the editors of Gender, Work

& Organization and anonymous reviewers of a paper which the

chap-ter on gender and the crisis in Spain draws from Johanna’s research was funded by the Academy of Finland five-year Academy Research Fellowship (decision no 259640) Emanuela wishes to acknowledge the travel fund-

ing received from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad

through the Evanpolge research project (Ref: FEM2012-33117), from the European Commission QUING research project and Erasmus teach-ing mobility fund, and the University of Helsinki

Our thanks also go to our colleagues and feminist networks at the University of Helsinki and Madrid Complutense University, which we have had the chance to share with one another during the past four years

of our research collaboration Emanuela would like to thank her Spanish colleagues Eva Alfama, María Bustelo and Julia Espinosa for the important special issue and debate they coordinated in 2015 on ‘Public Policies in Times of Crisis: a Gender Analysis’, to Margarita León for co-authoring

a joint paper on the issue, to Alba Alonso and Natalia Paleo for their stimulating research on the role of conservative ideology in times of aus-terity, and to Marta Cruells and Sonia Ruiz for their pioneer work on

intersectionality in Spanish anti-austerity movements She is also grateful

to her Esponjadas group of feminist friends in Madrid for most

empow-ering debates on the crisis as an opportunity for personal and collective change, right at the time in which austerity politics was hitting hard on Spanish peoples’ lives Johanna would like to thank all her colleagues at the University of Helsinki Gender Studies: especially Johanna Oksala for reading the Introduction, and Marjaana Jauhola, Marjut Jyrkinen, Milja Saari and Ville Kainulainen for joint research projects, publications, sup-port and academic friendships Her special thanks go to Anna Elomäki, Anu Koivunen and Hanna Ylöstalo for shared feminist struggles, activism

and research around and about the austerity politics in Finland in Tasa-

arvovaje and for the many inspirational moments together.

We would like to thank Sarah Childs as the editor of Palgrave’s Gender and Politics Book Series, and Ambra Finotello, Imogen Gordon Clark and Britta Ramaraj at the Palgrave Macmillan for their professional and kind support during the editorial process We received valuable support from Elisabeth Wide who worked as a research assistant at the University

of Helsinki and helped us to finalize the manuscript We thank Bàrbara Boyero for providing us with an inspirational photo for the cover of the book from one of the Spanish feminist demonstrations against auster-ity politics We dedicate the book to such actions and spirit: ‘¡Contra l’Ofensiva Patriarcal i Capitalista: Desobediéncia Feminista!’1

Helsinki and Madrid, 1 November 2016

note

1 ‘Against Patriarchal and Capitalist Attacks: Feminist Disobedience!’ (translation from the Catalan)

1 Gender and the Politics of the Economic Crisis in Europe 1

Johanna Kantola and Emanuela Lombardo

2 A Policy in Crisis The Dismantling of the EU Gender

Sophie Jacquot

3 The Gender Politics of EU Economic Policy: Policy

Shifts and Contestations Before and After the Crisis 49Rosalind Cavaghan

4 Opportunity and Setback? Gender Equality, Crisis

and Change in the EU 73Elaine Weiner and Heather MacRae

5 Gendering European Economic Narratives: Assessing

the Costs of the Crisis to Gender Equality 95Roberta Guerrina

6 Gendering Poland’s Crisis Reforms: A Europeanization

Ania Zbyszewska

contents

7 The Gender Dynamics of Financialization and Austerity

in the European Union—The Irish Case 139Stefanie Wöhl

8 The Visibility (and Invisibility) of Women and 

Gender in Parliamentary Discourse During the 

Portuguese Economic Crisis (2008–2014) 161Ana Prata

9 Whose Crisis Counts? Minority Women, Austerity

and Activism in France and Britain 185Akwugo Emejulu and Leah Bassel

10 Austerity Politics and Feminist Struggles in Spain:

Reconfiguring the Gender Regime? 209Emanuela Lombardo

11 Austerity Politics and Feminist Resistance in Finland:

From Established Women’s Organizations to New

Feminist Initiatives 231Anna Elomäki and Johanna Kantola

12 Conclusions: Understanding Gender and the Politics

of the Crisis in Europe 257Johanna Kantola and Emanuela Lombardo

Index 271

Leah Bassel is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Leicester Her

research interests include the political sociology of gender, migration, race and

citizenship and she is the author of Refugee Women: Beyond Gender versus Culture (2012) Her forthcoming co-authored book, with Akwugo Emejulu, is The Politics

of Survival Minority Women, Activism and Austerity in France and Britain Bassel

has also conducted an Economic and Social Research Council-funded project exploring migrants’ experiences of the UK citizenship test process She is Assistant

Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies.

Rosalind Cavaghan is a postdoctoral fellow at Radboud University, Nijmegen,

where she arrived in 2013 as a Marie Curie Intra European Fellow Her research combines the broad themes of European governance, public policy, gender and feminist political economy She completed her PhD in Edinburgh, where she worked as a policy consultant, prior to commencing academic research Her forth-

coming monograph Making Equality Happen: Knowledge, Change and Resistance

in EU Gender Mainstreaming, theorizes gender change and resistance using a new

approach, Gender Knowledge Contestation Analysis.

Anna  Elomäki is a post-doctoral research fellow in Gender Studies at the

University of Helsinki Her research interests are related to the interconnections between gender, politics and the economy Her current research project focuses on the economization of gender equality policies and advocacy in the European Union.

Akwugo  Emejulu is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick Her

research interests include the political sociology of race, gender and grassroots

activism Her book, Community Development as Micropolitics: Comparing Theories,

list of contributors

Policies and Politics in America and Britain, was published in 2015 Her coming co-authored book, with Leah Bassel, is The Politics of Survival: Minority Women, Activism and Austerity in France and Britain.

forth-Roberta Guerrina is Professor in Politics and Head of the School at the University

of Surrey She is a specialist in gender politics, with a particular interest in women, peace and security, EU politics and social policy, citizenship and gender equality She has published in the area of women’s human rights, work-life balance, identity

politics and the idea of Europe She is the author of Mothering the Union (2005) and Europe: History, Ideas and Ideologies (2002) Her work has appeared in International Affairs, Women’s Studies International Forum and Review of International Studies.

Johanna Kantola is Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki Her

books include Gender and Political Analysis (with Lombardo, Palgrave 2017), Gender and the European Union (Palgrave, 2010) and Feminists Theorize the State (Palgrave, 2006) She is one of the editors of The Oxford Handbook on Gender and Politics (2013) and Palgrave Gender and Politics Book Series.

Emanuela Lombardo is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science

and Administration 2 of Madrid Complutense University in Spain Her latest

books are Gender and Political Analysis (with Johanna Kantola, Palgrave 2017) and The Symbolic Representation of Gender (with Petra Meier, 2014) Recent arti- cles can be found in Politics, European Political Science, Gender, Work and Organization, and Comparative European Politics.

Heather  MacRae holds a PhD from Carlton University, and she is the Jean

Monnet Chair in European Integration and Associate Professor in Political Science

at York University, Canada Her research focuses on gender politics in the European

Union She recently co-edited the volume, Gendering European Integration Theory: Engaging New Dialogues (2016), with Gabriele Abels Her articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics and Women’s Studies International Forum.

Ana  Prata is Assistant Professor at California State University Northridge,

United States She specializes in European women’s movements, political sentation, gender and democratization, and issues of bodily citizenship She is currently working on a research project entitled ‘Southern European Women and the Economic Crisis – Assessing Problems, Policies and Practices’.

repre-Elaine  Weiner (2003, PhD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) is Associate

Professor in Sociology at McGill University, Canada Her research interests lie at the intersection of gender, work and Central and East European societies She is

the author of Market Dreams: Gender, Class, and Capitalism in the Czech Republic (2007) She has published in European Journal of Women’s Studies, European

Integration Online Papers, Social Problems, Social Politics, and Women’s Studies International Forum.

Stefanie  Wöhl Dr phil., is Senior Lecturer and Head of the City of Vienna

Competence Team on European and International Studies at the University of Applied Sciences BFI, Austria Her research interests and publications focus on European integration, gender, international political economy and state transformations.

Ania Zbyszewska is Assistant Professor at the Warwick Law School She researches

on regulation of work, law and gender, and law and politics in EU context and in

times of ‘transition’ She authored Gendering European Working Time Regimes: The Working Time Directive and the Case of Poland (2016).

© The Author(s) 2017

J Kantola, E Lombardo (eds.), Gender and the Economic Crisis in

Europe, Gender and Politics, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50778-1_1

Gender and the Politics of the Economic

of the crisis are significant and are analysed in gender scholarship from different disciplines Feminist economists show that as a result of the cuts to the public sector services, benefits and jobs, women’s unemploy-ment, poverty and discrimination have increased across the countries with minority women from different racial and ethnic backgrounds or with disabilities being disproportionately affected (Karamessini 2014a;

Pearson and Elson 2015) Feminist political scientists and sociologists document how the harder economic climate has been combined with conservatism as evidenced, for example, by hardened attitudes in the European Parliament and Spain towards abortion, increases in the levels

of domestic violence as well as women entering prostitution (Kantola and Rolandsen Agustin 2016) The rise of the populist right and left parties, anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic sentiments as well as racism and resentment towards migrants have included attacks on migrant women and veiled women (Athanasiou 2014) At the same time progressive gender and wider anti-discrimination policies, policy instruments and institutions that might counter these trends have suffered from signifi-cant cuts to their resources (Lombardo 2017) Feminist cultural studies analyse the ‘commodification of domestic femininities’: the idealization and promotion of female resourcefulness at times of recession and cuts

in family income in various television programmes and series (Negra and Tasker 2014: 7)

The aim of this book is to analyse how the economic and social crises are deeply intertwined with political ones Indeed, it makes sense to write about crises in plural as opposed to a single financial or economic crisis (Hozic and True 2016: 12; Walby 2015) A politics perspective shows the shifting boundaries between politics and economics, where economic power has taken ever more space from political decision-making with its dominant rhetoric that ‘we have no alternative’ to austerity (cf Hay and Rosamond 2002) Such rhetoric and policy choices reflect the neoliberal political ideologies of governments and EU politicians (Pontusson and Raess 2012) and have led to processes of de-democratization in EU’s political and economic decision-making (Klatzer and Schlager 2014) The long-standing crisis of democratic legitimacy of the EU has reached new heights with the crumbling of social rights of European citizens, for example, in Greece, with the troika of the European Central Bank (ECB), European Commission (EC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) dictating austerity politics on member states A politics perspective further highlights how political institutions—such as two-party systems—have been challenged with populist responses from both political left and right

in the European states Civil society movements and activists have lized in masses to resist austerity politics across Europe, proving the resil-ience of counterpower forces in European societies In the polity of the

mobi-EU, economization, de-democratization and politicization are nected European processes In this way, the institutional and policy shifts;

intercon-their top-down and bottom-up Europeanization through hard and soft law and discourses; and political resistance by civil society actors are at the core of political analyses of the crisis.

This book charts these developments in relation to gender The book, first, asks how the political and economic decision-making institutions and processes of the EU have changed as a result of the economic cri-sis and with what consequences for gender equality and gender equality policy Have the EU’s austerity politics been gender mainstreamed to take into account their differential impact on women and men? How has EU’s long-standing gender equality policy been affected by the economic cri-sis? Second, the book analyses processes of Europeanization as gendered These expose the gendered impacts of interdependent dynamics between

EU and domestic politics in times of crisis How are member states’ der equality policies, institutions, regimes and debates Europeanized in times of crisis? What changes does EU austerity politics produce in mem-ber states’ gender equality institutions and policies? Third, the chapters

gen-of the book focus on the feminist resistances and struggles around the economic crisis Civil society’s resistance against austerity politics and in favour of democracy shows that political contestation is at the core of this crisis and has important gender dimensions What is the role of gen-der and intersectionality in civil society’s anti-austerity struggles? What are feminist strategies of mobilization against neoliberal, conservative and racist politics?

This introductory chapter sets the scene for these complex issues about the gendered politics of the economic crisis in Europe In this chapter, we first map different feminist approaches to analysing the crisis We show how different gender conceptualizations and analytical strategies change the object of analysis in relation to the crisis Second, we explore the gendered politics of the crisis: institutions of the EU, processes of Europeanization, and resistances and struggles Finally, we introduce the book’s chapters

FemInIst ApproAches to AnAlysIng the economIc

crIsIs

Feminist scholars adopt different analytical approaches to the gendered politics of the economic crisis and each analytical perspective sheds a dif-ferent light on the questions We focus on five feminist perspectives: (i) women and the crisis, (ii) gender and the crisis, (iii) deconstruction of gender and the crisis, (iv) intersectionality and the crisis and (v) post-

deconstruction of gender and the crisis (see also Kantola and Lombardo

2017a, ) The adoption of any of these approaches changes one’s tion on the key concepts of this book—politics, institutions and intersec-tionality—and one’s definition of the crisis itself The distinctions between the approaches are analytical as most research combines them in a quest

defini-to answer empirical real world puzzles We suggest that analytically works such as these help to discuss the underpinnings of the approaches and their compatibility

frame-A number of feminist economists map the effects of the crisis on women

by using an approach that we call a women and the crisis approach This

sig-nifies analysing the different waves of the crisis where men’s employment

in the private sector, for example, in construction businesses, was worst hit at first, and how in the second wave, the public sector cuts started to erase women’s jobs, as well as the public sector services and benefits that women relied on (Bettio et al 2012; Karamessini and Rubery 2014) In the field of politics, this has signified studying the numbers of women and men in economic decision-making and banking Walby’s (2015: 57) question, ‘Would the financial crisis have been different if it had been Lehman Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers?’, makes us ask whether a more diverse composition of corporate boards would have moved financial leaders to take less risky decisions (for a critical discussion see Prügl 2016; True 2016) Feminist scholars have argued that it has been a men’s crisis

in the sense that men have been the dominant actors in the institutions that have inflicted the crisis and attempted to solve it (Pearson and Elson

2015: 14) Whilst taking ‘women’ and ‘men’ as relatively unproblematic and unitary categories, the approach has the strength of providing fac-tual evidence for policy makers about statistical patterns of the crisis as well as arguments for activists about who is represented in the institutions involved in solving the crisis and whose voice is heard in policy making

Second, a lot of the feminist research draws upon a gender and the crisis

approach where the focus is on the gendered impacts on the crisis A focus

on gender as opposed to women calls for an understanding of the wider societal structures that reproduce the continuing patterns of domination and inequality Gender norms underpin the three spheres of economy: finance, production and reproduction resulting in women’s overconcen-tration in the reproductive sphere (Pearson and Elson 2015: 10) The neoliberal policy solutions to the crisis that require cutting down the public sector rely on and reproduce traditional gender roles that delegate major responsibility of care for women This leads to shifts in the national

and European gender regimes (Walby 2011, 2015) and the EU austerity policies represent a ‘critical juncture’ that could revert long-term progress achieved in gender equality in Europe (Rubery 2014) Gender policies—including gender mainstreaming in the EU—and gender equality institu-tions have been downscaled in a number of countries at a time when they would be needed the most to counter the gendered effects of the crisis (Klatzer and Schlager 2014) A gender analysis that illustrates the patterns

of the feminization of poverty and increases in gender violence points to the ways in which the economic, political and social consequences of the crisis are gendered in complex ways At the same time there is increasing space in gender and crisis approaches to understand how gender intersects with other categories of inequality such as race and ethnicity, disability and class to result in differentiated impacts of the crisis

Third, deconstruction of gender and the crisis approach discerns the ways

in which the crisis is discursively constructed and how these tions are gendered and gendering The approach makes it possible to understand how some solutions are favoured over others and how gen-der is silenced, sidelined or employed in particular ways In other words, discursive constructions of gender offer particular subject positions and close off others These constructions have effects, they can politicize or de-politicize the crisis in particular ways and they impact on perceived solutions With this feminist approach scholars inquire: who defines and narrates the crisis, and how is the crisis constitutive of new and old politi-cal identities, institutions and practices? (See Hozic and True 2016: 14.) How is knowledge about the crises conditioned and informed by pat-terns of power? (Griffin 2016: 180) Penny Griffin suggests that there is

construc-a prevconstruc-alence of governconstruc-ance responses thconstruc-at ‘centrconstruc-alise women’s “essenticonstruc-al” domesticity or fiscal prudence, prevailing representations of men as public figures of authority and responsibility, and techniques of governance that exploit these’ (Griffin 2015: 55) Such techniques include, according to Griffin, gender quota systems based on the assumption that the presence

of women’s bodies balances out hypermasculine behaviour, or austerity measures that are instituted on the foundational assumption of women’s reproductive work as inferred but unpaid

Fourth, intersectionality approaches explore the inequalities,

marginal-izations and dominations that the interactions of gender, race, class and other systems of inequality produce in times of crisis, such as the differen-tiated impact of austerity policies on migrant minoritized women or men (Bettio et al 2012), female refugees in countries like Greece (Athanasiou

2014) and younger unemployed women and older women who see their pensions reduced or cut (Bettio et  al 2012; Karamessini and Rubery

2014) Heteronormativity is deeply implicated in the dominant narratives about the economic, social and political crises although their implications are detrimental to LGBTQ communities (Smith 2016: 231–232) For example, in the UK, there has been a silence about the impact of the government’s austerity policies on sexual injustices with the issue of same- sex marriage dominating the agenda (Smith 2016: 232) Intersectionality shows how different organizations and movements representing differ-ent groups can be pitted against one another in a seeming competition for scarcer resources, or, alternatively it can point to new alliances and solidarity at times of crisis (Bassel and Emejulu 2014) Populist right par-ties seeking to protect ‘our people’ can resort to racist or even fascist dis-courses that challenge the human rights of racialized others in European countries (Norocel 2013) European media and politicians continue to demonize Greeks as ‘whites but not quite’ drawing on racialized construc-tions of otherness, underpinned by presumed ‘laziness’ and ‘criminality’ (Agathangelou 2016: 208)

Finally, post-deconstruction and the crisis approach has yet to enter

gender and politics research (see Kantola and Lombardo 2017a) We use the term post-deconstruction to signal a diverse set of debates on feminist new materialism, corporealism and affect theory that come ana-lytically (not chronologically, Lykke 2010: 106) ‘after’ reflections on the deconstruction of gender (Ahmed 2004; Hemmings 2005; Liljeström and Paasonen 2010) These approaches are interested in understand-

ing what affects, emotions and bodily material do in gender and

poli-tics, beyond discourses The economic crisis makes the analysis of issues such as the material underpinning of the current political economy, its entrenched relations to neoliberalism, states’ biopolitics and emotions and affects and their bodily impacts particularly important (Coole and Frost 2010; Athanasiou 2014) Emotions and affects, such as anger, shame, guilt and empathy circulate in the economic crisis—think of the

rage of Spain’s Indignados movement and how important these emotions

are to understand socio-political developments around the crisis deconstruction analyses suggest that these emotions are not individual but social and involve power relations (Ahmed 2004) For instance, the neoliberal ‘austerity’ agenda has been accompanied by a moralizing discourse ‘that passes on the responsibility to citizens together with a feeling of guilt, making easier for governments to impose public expen-

Post-diture cuts and to increase social control of the population’ (Addabbo

et al 2013: 5) Another example is that of Northern women politician’s expressing empathy towards ‘the other women’ in the South, that can read as an affective expression of power that fixes the Southern coun-tries’ economic and gender policies as failed (Kantola 2015; Pedwell

2014) Feminist analyses using these approaches show that neoliberalism and violence constitute the vulnerabilities of the bodies affected by the crisis and protesting against it (Athanasiou 2014) Popular left and right parties whose popularity the crisis has increased play with emotions and affects too with tangible results for many

genderIng the polItIcs oF the crIsIs

Authors in this book take different perspectives on gender and the itics of the crisis While we have not suggested a particular theoretical framework or gender approach to them, we asked them to be reflexive of the theories that underpin their analyses of the crisis We have, instead, focused on three issues that, in our view, significantly capture the political dimension of the crisis from gender perspectives: (i) austerity politics and

pol-institutional and policy changes in the EU before and after the 2008

eco-nomic crisis from the analytical perspective of gender and intersectionality; (ii) the political dynamics of interaction between the EU and the member

states or the Europeanization of gender equality and policies in times of crisis and (iii) the gender and intersectional patterns of resistances and

struggles against austerity politics.

Austerity Politics, Institutional Changes and Gender Equality

Policy in the EU

The first ‘political’ aspect of the crisis that this volume addresses from a

gender perspective includes the policy and institutional changes that took

place in the EU during the economic crisis Following the financial crisis, the EU and its member states have pursued an austerity agenda, strength-ening the deregulatory impetus within a new economic governance regime that has marginalized the values of gender and wider social equality within the EC’s ‘Europe 2020’ economic strategy1

The book chapters analyse the institutional changes that these policy shifts have resulted in the EU and member states particularly, asking ques-tions such as: how are the shifts in the EU economic governance regime

in crisis times and in the EU institutional balance affecting gender equality policy agendas and struggles for wider equalities?

The political response applied in Europe after the 2008 economic

cri-sis has been that of austerity politics Austerity policies are a ‘set of

mea-sures and regulatory strategies in economic policies aimed to produce

a structural adjustment by reducing wages, prices and public spending’ (Addabbo et al 2013: 5) Feminist and other scholars have criticized both the rationale behind austerity politics and its social and political conse-quences According to this critique, austerity solutions are based on the transformation of a financial crisis—the result of an overfinancialization of the economy and the prioritization of the requirements of financial capital

at the expense of paid and domestic economies (Walby 2015)—into a lic debt crisis (Rubery 2014; Busch et al 2013; Bettio et al 2012) The conversion of the financial crisis into a public debt crisis pushed European states to buy out the unsustainable levels of banks and household debts built up within the financial sector—bailing out failing banks—in an effort

pub-to restabilize the markets, which in turn then began questioning the ity of states to finance them (Rubery 2014), thus rendering borrowing on newly established sovereign debt increasingly expensive and unsustainable (Karamessini 2014a; Busch et al 2013) This has had implications for the repertoire of policy responses, which policy makers could conceive of and the kind of impacts, which policies have subsequently had In Busch et al.’s words, the EU, in line with neoliberal economic analyses, ‘has interpreted the main cause of the crisis as debt and, based on this reversal of cause and effect’ it has implemented severe austerity rather than growth measures, especially in the Eurozone countries, with negative social and equality impacts for the already indebted Southern European states (Busch et al

abil-2013: 4)

The EU’s neoliberal economic regime and its emerging institutional configuration have heavily influenced the policies adopted in the after-math of the crisis, by constructing a new economic governance regime that has reorganized the coordination of economic policy along the lines

of ‘disciplinary neoliberalism’ The latter ‘involves both a discourse of political economy and a relatively punitive program of social reform’ (Gill and Roberts 2011: 162) Strict rules of fiscal and monetary policies in this system are imposed on member states that have bailed out failing banks The main institutional actors contributing to shape this new eco-nomic governance regime are the European Council, the ECB, ECOFIN

or the Council of Economic and Finance Ministers, the EC, and political

leaders of the member state governments, Germany enjoying the greater relative power in this process (Klatzer and Schlager 2014) The European Parliament has limited voice in this new economic governance regime, for instance it does not control the European Stability Mechanism and the European Semester, as the surveillance of member states’ economic policies tends to be jointly conducted by the ‘troika’ (EC, ECB and IMF).

EU policy responses to the crisis have first and foremost comprised efforts to encourage and coordinate states’ reduction of sovereign debt, through various instruments and discourses designed to enforce states’ reductions in public spending The austerity agenda includes measures that promote deregulation and liberalization of the market, including the labour market, through the reduction of labour rules, the decentralization

of collective bargaining from state to enterprises and cuts in wages (Busch

et  al 2013; Klatzer and Schlager 2014) The EU new macroeconomic governance regime comprises institutions, rules and procedures to coordi-nate member states’ macroeconomic policy ‘Europe 2020’, the European Commission Strategy on employment, productivity and social cohesion, sets the framework for the surveillance of member states’ economic poli-cies through new governance mechanisms These are the ‘Euro Plus Pact’, the ‘Stability and Growth Pact’, the ‘Fiscal Compact’ and a ‘Six-pack’ of

EU regulations that tie member states into a commitment to keep their annual budgetary deficit below 3 % and their debt below 60 % of GDP, targets established with the adoption of the European Monetary Union (EMU) (Klatzer and Schlager 2014; Maier 2011) The new economic governance tools challenge representative democracies by moving powers from parliamentary to executive branches of polities both at the national and supranational levels (Bruff and Wöhl 2016: 98)

In particular, the ‘Stability and Growth Pact’ includes expenditure and debt rules and severely increased sanctions for Eurozone countries The

‘Macroeconomic imbalance procedure’ gives the EC and ECOFIN the power to guide member states’ economic policy and sanction incompli-ance The ‘Fiscal Compact’ is an international treaty that severely con-strains member states’ (except UK and Czech Republic) fiscal policy and imposes debt reduction The ‘Euro Plus Pact’, adopted in 2011 by the initiative of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, puts pressure on member states to adopt reforms in the labour market, health and pension policies with the aim of achiev-ing greater market liberalization It sets the basis for the EU interven-tion in wage policy, since it considers wage policy as a key factor for

promoting competitiveness (Klatzer and Schlager 2014; Busch et  al

2013) A so-called Six-pack of EU regulations has entered into force

in 2011 to implement the ‘Euro Plus Pact’ with the objective of

‘enforcing measures to correct excessive macroeconomic imbalances

in the euro area’ (see Bruff and Wöhl 2016: 98–99) The ‘European Semester’ has reinforced the EU surveillance of member states’ eco-nomic and budget policy procedures and decisions, establishing an annual cycle of preset economic targets that member states have to achieve (Europe 2020), translation of these targets into country objec-tives through National Reform Programmes, which go together with Stability Programmes (where each member state plans the country’s budget for the coming three or four years), EU recommendations to member states, and European Council and Commission monitoring of implementation and imposing of financial sanctions to member states

in case of incompliance The ‘European Stability Mechanism’, through

an intergovernmental treaty adopted in 2012, establishes the rules for providing EU financial support to member states in economic diffi-culty; loans are subject to strict conditionality and structural economic reforms through a process controlled by the EC, in cooperation with ECB and IMF

While these macroeconomic policies aim to stabilize the European economy, stimulate growth and achieve price stability, they also aim to narrow the definition of the role of government in the macroeconomic arena, thus reducing the ability of the state to act as the financier and employer of last resort (Rubery 2014; Maier 2011) These policies are not therefore politically uncontested, due, among other things, to the high social costs in terms of increasing inequality (Klatzer and Schlager

2014; Rubery 2014) Indeed, gender analyses of EU policy responses to the crisis criticize that gender has not been mainstreamed either in policy design or implementation of ‘crisis measures’ (Karamessini and Rubery

2014; Bettio et al 2012; Villa and Smith 2014; Villa and Smith 2011; Klatzer and Schlager 2014) This is an issue discussed by Elaine Weiner and Heather MacRae in this volume (see Chap 4) Only in 9.8 % of the cases

of national policies implemented in response to the crisis was there some assessment of the measures from a gender perspective (Bettio et al 2012; Villa and Smith 2011) The European Employment Strategy, which had formerly integrated gender into its agenda, has progressively made gen-der invisible, so that it would have disappeared completely from EU2020

if it had not been reinserted in the last minute after amendments from

specific member states (Villa and Smith 2014) Even the European Economic Recovery Plan makes no mention of ‘gender’, ‘women’ or ‘equal-ity’, a fact that was criticized by the Commission’s Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men As gender experts denounce,

‘the “urgency” of a response to the crisis seems to have pushed gender mainstreaming further down the priority list’, including the basic presenta-tion of gender-disaggregated statistical data (Bettio et al 2012: 97–98) Despite broad consensus in the European Parliament’s FEMM Committee (Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee) about the importance

of tackling the gendered aspects of the crisis, political contestations came into play and shattered this consensus between the diverse political groups about the importance of gender perspective further undermining the role

of the European Parliament in promoting a gender perspective to the terity politics (Kantola and Rolandsen Agustin 2016)

aus-In Chap 2, Sophie Jacquot analyses the fate of the EU gender policy

in the midst of the economic crisis and arrives at a rather bleak conclusion The economic crisis has exacerbated the already ongoing stagnation in EU gender policy (see Jacquot in this volume) Parallel to the shifts in the EU macroeconomic governance regime in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, EU gender equality policies experienced a number of institutional and policy shifts that locate the EU as ‘the most striking example of a U-turn in the importance attached to gender equality as a social goal’ (Karamessini and Rubery 2014: 333) Although gender was not effectively mainstreamed into the EU macroeconomic policies even before the crisis, as Villa and Smith (2014) argue, it was indeed mainstreamed in the EU employment policies in the 1990s through the European Employment Strategies However, the EU has shifted its priorities and gender equality is not treated as a social goal and it is not integrated in employment policies any longer The shift in context, according to Villa and Smith (2014) helps to understand this gender invisibility in the EU employment agenda In the 1990s, the rise in women’s employment improved labour market perfor-mance in the member states and was thus considered important for the

EU economy, the neoliberal model was accompanied by developments in the social democratic model, and the entry of gender equality supporters such as Sweden and Finland all favoured the integration of gender into the EU employment policies The economic crisis context is less favour-able to gender equality, not only due to a stronger neoliberal ideology

in member governments, but also because ‘the key actors in favour of gender equality had been sidelined both internally in the Commission and

externally among member states’ (Villa and Smith 2014: 288), a ment we discuss in more detail below.

develop-In this respect, a significant shift in the institutionalization of gender equality in the EU occurred in the EC in January 2011, when responsibil-ity for gender equality moved from DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities to DG Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, together with two dedicated units on gender equality policies and on legal matters in equal treatment The responsibility for gender equality in the workplace is still in DG Employment, but there is no longer a dedicated unit on gender equality left in the DG (Woodward and Van der Vleuten

2014) This administrative shift, which occurred in the second Barroso Commission in 2010, unrooted the portfolio for equal opportunity and non-discrimination from their traditional base in DG Employment and Social Affairs, provoking deep political and strategic consequences on EU gender equality policies (Jacquot 2015)

The shift might be detrimental to gendering European integration in a moment in which a new EU economic governance regime is being built in response to the 2008 financial crisis to strengthen the coordination of national economic, labour market and social policies (Klatzer and Schlager 2014) It came precisely at the time in which the Council and the Commission, through mechanisms such as the European Semester and the ‘Six-pack legislation’, tightened control over member states’ economic and employment policies, with the consequence that the institutional shift of gender equality from DG Employment to DG Justice ‘distanced gender equality from employment policy and spread gender equality input thinly across the Commission’ (Villa and Smith 2014: 288) This could weaken the EU Equal Opportunities unit’s capacity of mainstreaming gender into economic and social initiatives.While the institutional shift from DG Employment to DG Justice boosted new developments in ‘justice’, evident in the legally bind-ing directives2 against gender-based violence, Jacquot (2015 and in this volume) argues that it contributed to locate gender equality even more within a legal perspective of rights, and it changed the interconnected-ness of the administrative, political, academic and activist actors specific

to the functioning of the ‘velvet triangle’ of EU gender equality policy (Woodward 2004) In relation to the rights-approach, the change risks to address EU gender equality only through a reactive, individually based, anti- discrimination approach, rather than through a proactive, group- based, preventive approach, as that exemplified by positive action and gen-der mainstreaming measures (Lombardo and Bustelo 2012) With respect

to the gender expert networks, the shift destabilized the ‘velvet angles’ constructed around DG Employment in decades because some

tri-of the historical experts were specialist in gender discrimination in the labour market It also promoted a more managerial approach in which the Commission considered these experts, rationalized in 2011 from the former three networks (Legal Experts Network, EGGE Expert Group

on Gender and Employment and EGGSIE Expert Group on Gender, Social Exclusion, Health and Long-Term Care) into one single network

as European Network of Experts on Gender Equality ENEGE, to save costs and improve management Moreover, the gender expert networks are hired to provide information and services to the Commission rather than as scientific and legal experts that advise the Commission on how to advance the cause of gender equality, as they formerly did (Jacquot in this volume)

The increased weight of member states in times of economic and tutional crisis, with a greater role of the Council of Ministers, also blocked developments in EU gender equality policies, as exemplified in the with-drawal of the revision of the maternity leave directive proposal and the blockage of the women on corporate boards directive proposal (Jacquot in this volume) The enlargement to Central and Eastern European countries further favoured the spread of neoliberal ideologies and, in some cases, more traditional notions of gender equality (see chapter on Poland by Zbyszewska in this volume; Villa and Smith 2014: 288) This shifting con-text, radicalized by the urgency to respond to the Eurozone crisis, tilted the balance between economic and egalitarian goals towards a promo-tion of neoliberal economic goals In the crisis context the EU shifted its priorities and seemed to forget its commitments to gender equality goals (Karamessini and Rubery 2014)

insti-The Europeanization of Gender Equality and Policies in Times

of Crisis

The second aspect of ‘the political’ that this volume analyses is the cal dynamics of interaction between the EU and the member states or

politi-the Europeanization of gender equality and policies in times of crisis This

includes the analysis of member states’ gender equality context, the cal and institutional changes in domestic equality institutions and policy making that are related to EU policy responses to the crisis, and the study

politi-of how austerity politics and its gender and intersectional dimensions are

constructed differently by different actors The chapters challenge the mative underpinnings of the EU austerity politics and its domestic impacts, asking questions such as: how are gender and other inequality policies, politics and regimes of production and reproduction Europeanized in cri-sis times? How do the domestic debates on austerity politics construct political priorities and articulate the balance between competing economic and equality ideologies?

nor-Europeanization refers to the dynamic interaction between the EU and the member states that allows to explain the domestic impact of Europe through the analysis not only of the transposition of EU directives (Radaelli 2004; Börzel and Risse 2000), but also of the soft mechanisms

of policy learning, norm diffusion through financial incentives, actors’ interactions and discursive usage of the EU (Lombardo and Forest 2012; Liebert 2003; Eräranta and Kantola 2016) Applying gender approaches

to Europeanization during the crisis allows us to explain both convergent and differentiated impacts of the EU austerity measures in the member states, that are due not only to transposition patterns, but also to interac-tions between national and EU actors and domestic discursive usages of the crisis and of the EU (Lombardo and Forest 2012; Lombardo in this volume; Zbyszewska in this volume) As suggested above, EU’s policy responses to the crisis have important gendered implications in the mem-ber states, not only for gender equality, but also for equality policies, in the direction of the dismantlement and restructuring of equality institutions and policies in different member states (Bettio et al 2012)

The impact of EU policy responses to the crisis on member states’ der equality varies depending on factors ranging from the characteristics

gen-of gender regimes, especially in relation to women’s integration in waged

labour and extent to which employment and social policies are able to free women from unpaid work of care (Karamessini and Rubery 2014; Wöhl 2014; Walby 2009); gender differences in employment, particularly because, despite women’s increased integration in the labour market, their higher presence in public sector occupations (education and health) and their greater involvement in part-time and temporary jobs, make women more vulnerable to be made redundant in times of recession and aus-terity (Rubery 2014); and intersectional differences of class, migration (e.g migrant women encounter more disadvantages in the labour mar-ket than native women), nationality, geographical location (e.g regional disparities in women’s employment rates) and age (e.g young women’s difficult integration in the labour market and old women facing higher

retirement ages due to pension reforms) (Karamessini 2014b; Karamessini and Rubery 2014).

The gendered impact of EU policy responses to the crisis on the ber states has worsened gender equality in Southern European coun-tries In Greece it has provoked the ‘deterioration of employment and social conditions of both women and men’ (Karamessini 2014b: 183) This is because fiscal and structural adjustments are spreading part-time among male workers, while the ‘crisis has interrupted women’s progress towards gender equality in paid work through their better integration in employment’ and the restructuring of the welfare state will negatively affect women (Karamessini 2014b: 183) Changes in wage determina-tion system, employment and welfare state have impoverished vulnerable and middle-class women and men, increasing the proportion of jobless households In Spain, from 2010 onwards, gender equality institutions have been downgraded or eliminated at the central and regional levels, and care and gender equality policies dismantled and reoriented towards more traditional goals (Lombardo in this volume; Lahey and De Villota

mem-2013) This could reverse significant progress achieved in gender ity policies in Spain in the last 20 years (González and Segales 2014) In Italy, Verashchagina and Capparucci (2014) warn that most policy reforms adopted during crisis will reinforce existing gender imbalances, in a con-text of high gender pay gap and gender segregation in the employment Budget cuts will reinforce traditional gender roles in family division of paid and unpaid work because ‘By cutting childcare and elderly care, funds for disabled and immigrants the entire burden of missing welfare is shifted

as the result of austerity policies since 2010 have been experienced by the most vulnerable women—lone mothers, single women pensioners and sin-gle women without children (Pearson and Elson 2015) Working- age cou-ples without children have been least affected (Pearson and Elson 2015) Despite state cuts in care policies, women are not voluntarily exiting the

labour market, thus dual earner households are currently resisting, though

in conditions of increased labour exploitation for both women and men, and care exploitation for women (Walby 2015) In Poland, despite a com-paratively good economic performance at the outset of the crisis, the gov-ernment imposed strict austerity policies, unpopular to citizens and labour unions and detrimental to women due to the increased privatization of care provoked by public cuts Polish politicians’ willingness to belong to the ‘EU neoliberal vanguard’ revealed that the crisis was functional to the consolidation of the country’s ongoing neoliberal reform project (see Zbyszewska in this volume) Even in the Nordic countries, such as Finland, neoliberal austerity politics have arrived later than in other European states but in 2015 have hit the women-friendly welfare state with severe cuts in the public budget that will shift the burden of care from the state to fami-lies, that is, women (see Elomäki and Kantola in this volume) There too the ‘political usage of the EU’ is discernible, namely justifying domestic austerity politics informed by political ideologies of governing parties with reference to the EU requirements (Kantola 2015)

The EU-member states dynamics in times of crisis has also implied

a turn to conservatism and de-democratization in the member states, which have gendered and racialized consequences (Verloo forthcoming) Governments of the member states worked to formulate austerity politics out of the reach of public democratic debate and civil society contesta-tions From Finland to Spain, governments of the member states adopted new laws to transpose the EU requirements about limits to budget deficit into national law, with negative consequences for women, who are espe-cially affected by public cuts, and for social and gender equality policies In Spain, the undemocratic reaction of the conservative government to citi-zens’ anti-austerity struggles has been a restriction of freedom of expres-sion and other human rights through the 2014 ‘Law of citizens’ safety’, which civil society has strongly opposed, renaming it the ‘Gag law’ (see Lombardo in this book)

In Finland, the 2015 conservative right government combined a liberal programme of austerity politics with conservatism and racism,

neo-especially promoted by the populist right party The Finns in the coalition

government, with detrimental consequences to gender equality and

gen-der equality policies The Finns party adopted anti-immigration policies,

refused to agree to the European common compulsory refugee tion policy and a quota mechanism during the 2015 refugees’ crisis, and developed a gendered racist rhetoric in which Finnish women were to

alloca-be protected from the violence of other culture’s men (see Elomäki and Kantola in this volume) In UK and France, minority women’s daily expe-

riences of economic, social, gender and race inequality before and after

the 2008 crisis move Emejulu and Bassel (in this volume) to speak of

‘routinised crises’, that is ‘persistent, institutionalised and ordinary ships in everyday life’ As the authors write: minority women’s ‘persis-tently high unemployment and poverty rates are not “exceptional” and not necessarily problems to be addressed through policy action since they are indicators of capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy operating as intended Once we understand minority women’s precarity as the banality

hard-of everyday life we can begin to understand the fallacy hard-of the construction

of the 2008 economic “crisis”.’ The crucial question that intersectional analyses of the crisis such as Emejulu and Bassel raise is: a crisis for whom?

Gender and Intersectional Struggles Around Austerity Politics

in Europe

The third ‘political’ dimension of a gender and intersectional analysis of the crisis in Europe that we explore in this book is that of civil society’s intersectional struggles against austerity politics A number of countries have witnessed dramatic changes in civil society activism and political party systems as a result of the crisis New forms of resistance include, for example, new political parties, such as the rise of left populist parties like Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece, or the strengthening of radical right populist politics in other parts of Northern and Eastern Europe, France or the UK. At the same time as some groups and peoples have been empowered others have been further marginalized reflecting, for instance, the existing gendered and racialized inequalities The book explores these aspects of the resistances and struggles against austerity politics What

is the role of gender equality and intersectionality in civil society’s anti- austerity struggles, as well as in the new populist parties’ politics?

Feminist scholarship has studied how neoliberalism has

fundamen-tally shaped the context where feminisms operate and explore governance

feminism and market feminism to grasp their changing forms and

prac-tices (Prügl 2011; Kantola and Squires 2012; Evans 2015) Penny Griffin (2015: 51) coins the term ‘crisis governance feminism’, which is a ‘form of feminist strategy friendly to existing neo-liberal governance and supportive

of the resuscitation of neo-liberal global finance’ The concepts illustrate how feminisms may have adapted to the neoliberal context by adopting a

role of providing gender expertise into existing policies rather than ing in more radical political forms of critique Although one could inter-pret the economic crisis as a crisis of neoliberalism, this has not been the case (Crouch 2011) Instead neoliberal economic policies have become entrenched as discussed above in relation to the EU. On the one hand, this could have the potential to transform feminist resistance: new forms

engag-of feminist autonomous movements appear (see Elomäki and Kantola in this volume), and the strengthening of national and international femi-nist alliances (Lombardo in this volume) On the other hand, the cri-sis may generate new challenges for feminist and intersectional struggles for equality in the harder political climate (see Emejulu and Bassel; and Jacquot in this volume)

As formerly noted, austerity politics in the EU has been accompanied with a trend of de-democratization The new forms of economic gover-nance—discussed above—are closed off from democratic debate, partici-pation and civil society lobbying It has indeed become harder for many feminist organizations to lobby governments and the EU. As economic austerity discourses are dominant equality needs to give way to the per-ceived economic necessities There is a powerful discursive construction

of exceptional times when equality cannot be afforded and is for the good times Moreover, changes in the new economic governance regime of the

EU and new undemocratic regulations in the member states, such as the constitutional securing of the annual budget deficit below 3  % and the

‘gag law’ in Spain, have made political institutions especially impenetrable for citizens and activists

The hard climate of neoliberalism and austerity has been combined with overt racism in European societies, brought to the surface with the so-called refugee crisis since 2015 and, for example, the UK’s Brexit vote

in 2016, and gender conservatism pushing women away from the labour market Whilst institutional racism has underpinned European societies before the crisis, few would dispute that racist incidents have surfaced across Europe and been legitimized by the radical right politics of politi-cal leaders In their chapter, Emejulu and Bassel (in this volume) show how minority women’s struggles for equality have been made harder and more invisible in such a context At the same time, these negative trends

in terms of feminist organizing may spark new forms of activism and ances, which has been the case in a number of European countries includ-ing Spain and Finland (see Elomäki and Kantola; and Lombardo in this volume)

alli-As a result of the economic crisis NGO and civil society funds have been reduced at national and European levels with very concrete conse-quences for feminist resistance and lobbying This is not a unified trend as some actors might have benefited and others not In her chapter, Sophie Jacquot (in this volume) suggests that competition is rife at the EU level between organizations in the areas of gender equality, anti-discrimination and social inclusion and protection for the decreasing levels of funding Citing Pauline Cullen’s research (Cullen 2014) she suggests that the once powerful European Women’s Lobby (EWL) may be one of the organiza-tions that has lost some of its former legitimacy and power.

the content oF thIs Book

This chapter has introduced the theme of the book, which is the cal’ implication of the current economic crisis in Europe from a gender and intersectional perspective This has meant introducing the three main issues developed in the chapters: (i) EU austerity politics and related insti-tutional and policy changes, (ii) the Europeanization of gender equality and policies in times of crisis and (iii) the gender and intersectional pat-terns of resistances and struggles to austerity politics

‘politi-Chapters 2 3 4 and 5 focus on EU austerity politics and the gendered

institutional and policy changes that are connected to it Sophie Jacquot

analyses the most recent process of change with regard to the EU gender equality policy (institutions, instruments, interests and ideas), tracing the

‘dismantling’ of this policy field Her chapter illustrates how this tling process does not originate in a planned and deliberate decision It rather stems from a medium-term policy trajectory, which has been made even more acute by a fundamental external factor—the effects of eco-

disman-nomic austerity since the end of the 2000s Rosalind Cavaghan develops a

theoretical and methodological approach to analyse the political tions around gender mainstreaming in the EU financial crisis Cavaghan’s chapter provides an analytical and methodological framework for analys-ing the processes through which the EU’s ‘u-turn’ in gender mainstream-

contesta-ing implementation has occurred Elaine Weiner and Heather MacRae

use feminist historical institutionalism to argue that gender equality has only advanced in the EU when it poses little, or no, threat to the ‘neolib-eral project’ In the throes of crisis, economic restructuring represents the indispensably important issue occupying the public realm, whilst the ‘fem-

inist project’ is cast off as an expendable, unimportant matter Roberta

Guerrina analyses the effectiveness of feminist advocacy in keeping the

gender ‘question’ on the agenda of the EU by focusing on the FEMM Committee of the European Parliament, the Commission’s gender unit and the EWL

Chapters 6 7 and 8 address the Europeanization of gender equality

policies, regimes and discourses in times of crisis Ania Zbyszewska places

Poland’s crisis response against the backdrop of the EU’s macroeconomic reforms on the one hand, and Poland’s own ongoing neoliberal transition project and long-term development plans on the other, to reflect on the extent to which gender implications of Poland’s anti-crisis measures were

adequately considered Stefanie Wöhl discusses the EU gender

dynam-ics of financialization and austerity and its effects on the livelihoods of households and especially women in the Republic of Ireland She explores political institutional change at the supranational and national levels and

resistance against austerity and evictions in Ireland Ana Prata discusses

the economic crisis and austerity policies in Portugal and the political and institutional changes that impacted the lives of women and families Her analysis shows that political discourse in parliament was mostly ungen-dered and focused on how the crisis impacted families and on the decline

of birth rates, without specific policies directed at women

Chapters 9 10 and 11 focus on another aspect of the EU-national dynamics in times of crisis, which is that of feminist struggles against neoliberal austerity politics, as well as against conservatism and racism

Akwugo Emejulu and Leah Bassel use the conceptual lens of

intersection-ality to explore the material and discursive effects of the 2008 economic crisis and subsequent austerity measures in France and Britain on the activ-ism of minority women Drawing on interviews with minority women in Britain and France, the authors examine the opportunities for activists to

articulate a politics that names multiple forms of inequality—racism and gender inequality and poverty accentuated by the crisis—and to build soli- darity across different interest groups Emanuela Lombardo argues that,

although the Spanish gender regime has experienced progress towards a more public rather than domestic type in the first decade of the 2000s, EU and Spain’s austerity politics enacted from 2010 onwards are changing the Spanish gender regime in more neoliberal and conservative directions Feminist and civil society’s struggles against austerity and anti-equality policies have offered political opportunities for resisting the changes in the

gender regime, preventing so far the redomestication of women Anna

Elomäki and Johanna Kantola argue that the three governing parties of

the conservative right government in Finland represent neoliberalism, conservatism and anti-immigration with detrimental consequences to gender equality They study the reactions to these gendered and racialized policies by focusing on anti-austerity activism and feminist resistance in Finland and show the inability of the established women’s organizations

to effectively resist austerity politics and the space that this creates for new movement actors

Finally, the concluding Chap 12 by Johanna Kantola and Emanuela

Lombardo draws out the implications for understanding gender politics

and policy in Europe in times of crisis The picture that emerges shows patterns of political and institutional dismantlement of gender equality policies, perpetuation of old gendered dynamics revitalized by the crisis and pertaining to both new and old political formations and civil society’s struggles against the neoliberal project and discourses

notes

1 See http://ec.europea.eu/europa2020

2 Directive 2011/99/EU of The European Parliament and of the Council 2011 on the European protection order Directive 2012/29/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2012 establishing minimum standards on the rights, sup-port and protection of victims of crime

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