Thumbnail Image
Item

Gendering EU security strategies : a feminist postcolonial approach to the EU as a (global) security actor

Title / Series / Name
Publication Volume
Publication Issue
Pages
Authors
Sachseder, Julia
Stachowitsch, Saskia
Editors
Keywords
European security strategies
Gender
feminist security studies
race
security strategies
Political Science and International Relations
SDG 5 - Gender Equality
Show all metadata
Files
Thumbnail Image
Sachseder-Julia1_2023.pdf
Adobe PDF, 2.02 MB
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/27588
Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between the EU’s current re-imagining as a global security actor and its stance as a global promoter of progressive gender norms. For this purpose, we analyse how gender and race are constitutive of the meanings of security and Europe in major EU security strategies, and how this relates to the way gender (equality) is addressed as a policy issue. We find that, in the context of waning liberal world order and manifold internal and external crises, EU security actorness is constructed through narratives of masculinisation that entail feminisation of the EU’s own past as a “peace project” and “soft power”; Othering of non-EU spaces and subjects; colonial perspectives on the EU’s role in the world as “White Man’s burden” and the reconstruction of whiteness through notions of “neutral” masculinities associated with technocratic professionalism, superior knowledge production, and market rationality. This intersectional gendering of EU security limits the emancipatory potential of gender policy through the racialisation of Other women and the simultaneous invisibilisation of postcolonial structures of inequality. Our analysis provides the groundwork for addressing how and why the EUropean security project continues to reproduce intersectional power relations and insecurities, despite commitments to gender equality and non-discrimination.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2023-07-03
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1080/09662839.2023.2232742
Publisher link
Unit
Collections
Gender Studies
International Relations