Women's substantive representation and gender mainstreaming in the EU pandemic recovery

RECOVER-GEU presents an innovative gendered perspective on EU crisis politics and policies integrating theoretical and methodological approaches from political economy, EU, gender and policy analysis. The project aims to understand how the effectiveness of gender mainstreaming within the multilevel governance framework of the EU is moderated domestically by women's representation. The project addresses whether women's substantive representation extends beyond parliamentary debates to (fiscal) policy outcomes in the case of the Covid-19 crisis and the National Recovery and Response Plans. RECOVER-GEU provides a timely gendered assessment of the ongoing flagship EU response to the pandemic and offers insights into the drivers of heterogeneous gender mainstreaming in the recovery, enriching the debate on the future of EU economic governance and gender equality policies. The project is methodologically innovative as it improves text-as-data approaches for classifying gender-sensitive policy-relevant content and extends civically engaged research methodologies to the multilevel, multilingual and cross-country context of EU politics and policies. The host institution and supervisor offer the fellow an ideal interdisciplinary and policy-oriented environment at the frontier of research on EU crisis responses and gender equality policies. The fellow will receive training in cutting-edge computational, qualitative and gendered policy methodologies. Additionally, she will gain unparalleled access to practitioners and an extensive network of partner institutions in all fieldwork cities and with renowned gender research centers. At the same time, EUI offers crucial research support and expertise in grant development and project management.