Social constructivism

The chapter introduces mainstream approaches to social constructivism in European Integration theory in the following section, identifying what they miss out by not incorporating gender as an analytical lens. It discusses the contribution of feminist approaches, in particular from gender, intersectional, and deconstructionist perspectives, and how these approaches deepen and expand our theorising about the social construction of European Union (EU) polity, politics, and policy. Social constructivism enters European Integration theory at the end of the 1990s from the discipline of International Relations, which shares sociology’s insights about the social construction of reality. ‘Gender’ approaches treat gender as a social construction and understand gender inequalities as always related to wider societal structures, such as family, labour, or political institutions, and the gender norms and practices they produce. Feminist social constructivist analyses offer important insights on the gender and intersectional norms, meanings, and power relations that are discursively constructed and contested in the EU.