A Missing Piece? Men and the Puzzle of Gender Mainstreaming in the European Union

Abstract

In its early uptake and sweeping application of gender mainstreaming, the European Union (EU) sits in the vanguard. However, bringing a gender perspective to bear on policy has proven a stubborn challenge. Drawing on Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” approach and her conceptualization of policies as gendering practices, I critically interrogate how men have been implicated in the problem of gender inequality via policy discourse in the EU. I focus on violence against women/gender-based violence and gender inequalities in education. Analysis of these two issues serves to highlight some of the interpretive limits to the problem of gender inequality in the EU and likely beyond. The discursive elusiveness of men works to keep much of the workings of gender power obscured. Such discounting of “the man question” signals a significant misstep that undercuts gender mainstreaming’s transformative prospects.