10.05.2024

Departmental Seminar: "Challenges to feminist knowledge? The economisation of EU gender equality policy"

Anna Elomäki(Academy Research Fellow at Tampere University, Finland) on Wednesday, 15 May, 16:15-17:45, Room 124 at the Institute of Political Science (or online via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/93089750663 Meeting ID: 930 8975 0663, Passcode: 142311)

Although the European Union (EU) is often seen as a progressive gender equality actor, its neolibeequality. The EU’s gender equality policy has always been instrumental to the EU’s economic priorities, and in the aftermath of the financial and economic crisis of 2007–2008 some EU institutions have explicitly promoted arguments about the benefits of gender equality for economic growth and competitiveness. The lecture maps the actors, processes and knowledge that have contributed to the neoliberal economisation of EU’s gender equality policy and asks how the proliferation of arguments and knowledge about macroeconomic benefits has affected these policies. The lecture argues that economisation limits the possibilities of feminist governance actors and feminist knowledge to challenge the EU’s gendered economic policies and the economic priorities, ideas and values that shape its gender equality policy.ralised economic policies are hostile to gender

Dr Anna Elomäki is Academy Research Fellow at Tampere University, Finland. She obtained her PhD in Gender Studies in 2012. Her research focuses on the interconnections between the economy, politics and gender in Finland and at the EU level, and on EU integration with a focus on gender equality policies and economic governance. She has studied, among other things, gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting, economisation and neoliberalisation of gender equality policy, and gendered impacts and practices of economic policy-making. Her current research project focuses on the implementation of EU economic governance in member states from the perspective of gender equality and democracy. Dr. Elomäki has published widely in key international journals in the fields of political science, gender studies and social policy. Her co-edited books include European Parliament’s Political Groups in Turbulent Times (Palgrave, 2022, with Petra Ahrens and Johanna Kantola) and Social Partners and Gender Equality: Change and Continuity in Gendered Corporatism in Europe (Palgrave 2022; with Johanna Kantola and Paula Koskinen Sandberg).