EU Citizenship in a Gender Perspective

EU citizenship as a particular type of regional citizenship merits special attention due to its character, meaning and implications in a gender and intersectionality perspective. Formally established in the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), the European Communities had already developed the framework for the application of social and civic rights in their founding treaties and introduced individual political rights with the direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979. European citizenship exists as a transnational legal status and as a practice regarding the claim for equal rights and inclusion. This has also applied to the advancement of gender equality, where the European Communities have set standards for equal pay and women’s free access to employment. Today, the concept of EU citizenship forms core elements of the political dimension of European integration. The chapter explores what the potentials and limits of EU citizenship are for the promotion of equality and the mobilization and accommodation of gender-diversity claims at the European level. On the one hand, women’s struggles for equal rights and gender justice have embraced the legal framework of EU citizenship. On the other hand, the struggle over the future of social and democratic citizenship has opened new horizons of intersectional, multilayered citizenship still hard to reconcile with existing notion of bounded citizenship. A comprehensive analysis of EU citizenship thus needs to entail a double focus on “policy formulation” and “implementation” from above by the political institutions of the EU and on “bottom-up processes” from below in relation to the demands from social movements and civil society. EU currently experiences gender backlashes, increasing manifestations of anti-gender mobilization and a return of authoritarian government that can lead to new forms of gender exclusion, enhanced risks for women and discrimination.