GERIQ: Feminist Politics and Gender Equality Policy: The Representation of Interests and Inequalities (2015-2020)

This project, organised within the GEXcel International Collegium for Advanced Transdiscplinary Gender Studies analyses and compares gender equality policy and policymaking processes in the EU. It takes into account both content, i.e. the policy outcome, and form, i.e. the policy process. The latter deals with the way in which (organised) interests, in particular those based on gender, class, ethnicity, functionality, and sexual orientation, are both and sometimes simultaneously, opposed and obstructed and provided with opportunities for visibility and representation. To understand the oppositional dynamics to gender equality, the analytical difference between structural inequalities in societies and political projects that engage with them (to obstruct/oppose or to provide opportunities) are considered to be related but never conflated: the mere existence of social inequalities does not ‘cause’ equality policies Methodologically, we build on policy analysis, critical frame analysis, voice analysis and a meta-policy approach to policy analysis. We explore the implications of the visibility or silencing of interests for gender equality and for feminist theory, and ask how the silencing of some groups and interests constitutes a form of opposition to gender equality.