Abstract
The European Union (EU) is a normative gender actor for its internal policy. Since the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 and the establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in 2010, the EU has worked to create more coherence between its internal and external policies. This thesis examines whether the EU is a gender actor in the area of foreign and security policy, discerning how it has embraced the Women Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda in its work in fragile and conflict-affected states (FCAS). Beginning with the 2008 Comprehensive Approach to the adoption of the EU 2018 Strategic Approach to WPS, this thesis further analyses the intersection of these policies with key security policies and the EU Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP), which is seen as the primary funding instrument to be deployed in cases of crisis and conflict.
Through critical frame analysis of policy and programmes I identify whether the EU has created a ‘path towards mainstreaming gender’ for its staff and key actors engaged in foreign and security issues. The analysis of elite interviews with EU staff based in Brussels and in different FCAS provide an opportunity to scrutinise the EU approach to gender equality and WPS and the role of actors involved and responsible for the implementation of the WPS Agenda, at the HQ and field mission level.
This thesis makes a significant contribution to the body of literature that looks at the EU as a gender actor in foreign affairs. It concludes that the EU has made several steps towards demonstrating its commitment to the WPS Agenda, but it is not the kind of gender actor that it purports to be in its foreign and security work in FCAS. The continual progress and improved gender frames in policy documents at the HQ level are undermined by the persistence of parallel paths, policy hierarchies and gender resistance at the HQ and field level. There is a clear cleavage between the way these policies are intended and understood at HQ and the way they are implemented on the ground in real-life scenarios. Thus, the EU remains a key donor that supports gender equality endeavours with ad-hoc funding, but in the larger framework of security strategies and actions ‘gender’ and ‘security’ follow parallel paths, and gender issues remain as a second-order politics.