The Struggle for Influence: Gender and Sexual Equality Policymaking at the European Union

Research problem and specific questionsThis project investigates the European Union’s (EU) policymaking regarding intimate citizenship issues – i.e., the set of social policies concerning intimate partnerships, reproductive choices, sexuality, and gender identities – and contributes in-depth knowledge on the increasing mobilization of “anti-gender” civil society organizations seeking to reverse the progress made by the EU in this domain.

Existing research in the field of gender and politics has so far considered opposition to gender and sexual equality as largely foreign to the EU policy process, leaving the advocacy by anti-gender actors at the supranational level largely unexplored.

Relatedly, while scholars have examined the efforts to mainstream sexual orientation and gender equality in EU social policy by feminist and LGBT+ organizations, this project assesses the resilience of their achievements and explores whether and how they mobilize to counter anti-gender groups.Data and methodThe project is divided into two studies.

The first study combines content analysis with network analysis to investigate which organizations seek to influence policymaking in the intimate citizenship domain, with whom they forge coalitions, how these coalitions are structured, and how resources and power are distributed across them.

The second study combines frame analysis with interpretive process-tracing to explore the framing strategies employed by the identified coalitions and assess how these strategies have enabled them to influence the debates on intimate citizenship at the European Parliament.

Original datasets will be constructed for each study with publicly available data.Plan for project realisationThe project will be conducted over three years. Most of the budget will be allocated to cover the salary costs of the participating researchers. The rest will be employed to cover running costs such as conferences participation or language correction.

RelevanceSocial policies regulating intimate citizenship issues are strongly linked with the liberal values of democratic inclusion, human rights, and equality enshrined in the EU’s foundational treaties.

Understanding the power and influence on policymaking that anti-gender groups have and how feminist and LGBT+ activists counteract them is thus important for assessing both the direction that the EU’s social policy will take in the future and the room that democratic liberalism will have at the supranational level.