The power of EU masculinities: a feminist contribution to European integration theory

Special Issue: JCMS Special Issue 2016: Another Theory is Possible: Dissident Voices in Theorising Europe. Guest Editors: Ian Manners and Richard WhitmanAbstract:
This article advances feminist analysis in the study of European integration through a focus on gender power in relation to masculinity constructs. It takes issue with the fact that gender studies tend to equate gender with women. It sketches a feminist contribution to integration theory, where the EU is perceived as gender regimes at multiple levels.
Gender identity constructs – masculinities and femininities – rely on difference and are shifting across time, levels and sectors. Yet the variations of identity constructs are limited by well-established ideas – gender binaries – providing continuity and path dependences to maintain the gender system, for example through the ‘EU protector masculinity’ in the EU CSDP. European integration thus is a process whereby EU masculinities and femininities are constructed through EU relations to other states in the global context and in EU policy-making and institution-building.