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European Integration and the Politics of Scale. A Gender Perspective

European Union
Gender
Governance
Birgit Sauer
University of Vienna
Birgit Sauer
University of Vienna
Sabine Lang
University of Washington

Abstract

Space and location are not innocent with respect to structures of power and domination, and hence for gender relations and gender equality politics. We argue that issues of size and scale are important dimension, which might shed light on gendered dimensions of EU integration, EU politics and policies. Creating size and scale, hence, might be an instrument to institutionalize gendered power relations by disempowering women and women’s groups: Jumping scales, re-locating spaces of decision-making, expanding or narrowing down spaces of politics might disencourage women’s participation in politics. On the other hand scaling and size might also create empowering structures for women’s politics – as the feminist literature on federalism has shown. How citizens experience European integration in their daily lives thus needs to be reflected in any integration theory and refers back to evidence of scaling. This paper wants to contribute to the studies and theories on EU integration the dimension of size and scale by referring to feminist standpoint theories as well as critical feminist geography.