Fish Fingers and Measles? Assessing Complex Gender Equality in the Scenarios for the Future of Europe

Abstract

In 2017, at a time when the EU was experiencing a triple crisis, the European Commission published a White Paper containing five scenarios outlining potential ways out of it. In his State of the Union address Commission President Juncker added a sixth. Although the Commission refers to fundamental values it neglects gender equality and reduces equality to the harmonization of the quantity of fish in fish fingers and EU-wide access to vaccination against measles. Despite the neglect of gender equality, the scenarios are not gender neutral. A feminist institutionalist analysis unpacks the potential direct and indirect positive and negative gendered consequences of each scenario and illuminates how the choice of scenario makes a difference as to their gendered impacts and as to the access for feminist actors to bring gender issues to the table.