In 2009, Sylva Walby asserted that the “neoliberal project” - intensifying in response to the economic and financial crises - is resulting in a “sharply gendered attack” on many of the hard-won achievements of the ‘feminist project.” In this chapter, we take up Walby’s contention, to look at the EU case. The EU has long been considered a trendsetter in promoting gender equality. We argue, however, that gender equality has only advanced in the EU when it poses little, or no, threat to the “neoliberal project.” In the throes of crisis, economic restructuring represents the indispensably important issue occupying the public realm. The “feminist project” – and its equalizing aims – is cast off as an expendable, unimportant matter. The feminist supposition that gender relations and the economy are profoundly intertwined, in largely inequitable fashion, once publically acknowledged in the EU, is now increasingly ignored or institutionally marginalized. We analyze the 2011 “six pack” reforms and responses to their ‘gendered’ crafting from the European Women’s Lobby, the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Parliament in order to illuminate this ‘take down’ of the EU’s ‘gender equality agenda’ as an acceptable and seemingly negligible cost of economic recovery.
