Gender Equality, Democracy Support and Security in the EU’s neighbourhood policies

The EU's global efforts to promote gender equality as part of its democracy promotion agenda, which focuses primarily on the Eastern and Southern Neighbourhood, require a thorough review. There is a gap between rhetoric and implementation in the EU's external promotion of gender equality. Criticism centres on the discrepancy between ambitious rhetoric and actual implementation. The focus on integrating women into existing structures, rather than challenging power structures and fully realising gender equality, reflects a superficial understanding of gender equality. This issue is highlighted by rather isolated approaches to furthering gender equality, democracy and security. While the EU highlights its commitment to intersections between gender and security and gender and democracy, it still lacks a strategy to address its complex interdependences. Yet, external support for gender equality harbours a number of risks and challenges. Empirically, gender mainstreaming is crucial in all cooperation programmes and target projects in line with the Gender Action Plan III (GAP III). However, translating this goal to local realities may be met with rejection or incomprehension, while excessive flexibility may dilute the core principles of gender equality in democratic societies. The intersection between gender and security is similarly multifaceted, with the focus gradually expanding from considering the impact of violent conflict on women alone to challenging underlying gendered understandings of peace and conflict. And finally, the relationship between democracy and security has to be taken into consideration, if we assume that both influence gender equality. The proposed paper places a particular emphasis on the EU agenda to link gender equality, democracy and security issues. This linkage between gender equality and security requires a conceptual connection between security studies and approaches to promote gender equality and democracy. Empirically, this paper explores how EU aspirations to promote gender equality are securitised and/or linked to various security risks and threats and how this might change patterns of contestation.