This paper argues that the EU, rather than promoting gender equality abroad, as it claims in the external actions section of the Strategy for Equality between Women and Men, is contributing to gender inequality in non-EU countries, through its internal and external climate actions. The EU has been committed to gender mainstreaming since 1996, has declared gender equality a fundamental value of the Union, and has reiterated its goal of achieving gender equality by gender mainstreaming all internal and external policy. However, EU climate change policy, with a few recent exceptions, has remained gender blind. This applies to policy which aims to reduce emissions within the European Union and to policy aimed at facilitating adaptation in the countries in the global South, which are the most severely affected by climate change. For example, in an effort to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, the EU increased its use of biofuels imported from developing countries. The land converted to biofuels production was not the prime agricultural land used by men for cash crops, but the marginal land used by women for subsistence. Through a combination of policy document analysis and institutional analysis, this paper demonstrates how climate change policy is made in parallel to gender mainstreaming processes, without being affected by them.
