The EU’s Legitimation Practices as a Gender Champion: An analysis of colonial continuities within the third Gender Action Plan

The European Commission (EC) published its Action Plan on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in External Action 2021–2025 (GAP III) in November 2020. Being one of the EU’s most progressive gender frameworks, it is presented as an opportunity for transformative change and an intersectional approach to tackling gender inequalities through the EC’s international partnerships. Although feminist concepts for transformative change have entered this policy framework, the question arises as to what degree colonial continuities come into play when the EC legitimises its gender policies for third-partner countries. This paper compares three African Country Level Implementation Plans (CLIPs) to investigate this question: Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. With the help of a Critical Discourse Analysis, the CLIPs for these three countries are studied and put into a greater context of the general EU-Africa relations. The aim is to illustrate which colonial colonialities on gender make their way into the EU’s legitimation practices and to what degree these are used to legitimise the EU’s role as a Gender Champion. As post-colonial research is significantly sidelined in EU legitimation research, this feminist analysis presents a significant value for the discipline.