Women’s Substantive Representation and Gender Mainstreaming in the EU Pandemic Recovery

• In Event: Gender and International Relations

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic evidences how policy responses moderate crises’ gendered impact. The paper investigates the determinants of gender-sensitive policies in the case of EU recovery plans. Next Generation EU entails common funding and priorities, including gender mainstreaming. Yet, the plans are designed at the national level. The study considers within the multi-level governance of the RRF - supranational and domestic drivers of gender mainstreaming. While the RRF represent unprecedented progress in including a gender mainstreaming mandate, its efficacy in delivering gender-sensitive recovery plans ap- appears limited and heterogeneous across countries. The case of Italy is of particular interest as given high EU conditionality and high economic gender gaps, it would be most likely to expect high prioritization of gender equality under the gender mainstreaming mandate. Italy is a Southern country among the largest recipients of the funds and with persistent economic gender gaps. On one side, one may expect higher conditionality pressure from the EU level to be at play. On the other, under weakened budget constraints the especially high gendered pandemic cost would suggest high pull factors for gender equality in the plans. In parallel, Italy’s problematic track record for political gender gaps offers a valuable case for the assessment of women’s under-representation as a hindering factor in gender mainstreaming. At the same time the analysis identifies (i) the role and strategies of gender-sensitive actors in the policy network during the drafting of the NRRPs and (ii) their influence across the policy cycle even in a context of under-representation. The research design complements secondary data and social network analysis with elite interviews. The paper identifies the contribution of domestic drivers of heterogeneous success in gender mainstreaming across the multilevel governance of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. The analysis contributes to understanding the politics and policies of gender mainstreaming in the pandemic recovery in the EU. More broadly, it contributes to the gendered assessment of the distributive implications of EU crisis responses and the role of substantive representation.

Author

• Matilde Ceron, European University Institute