Diverging compliance to Gender mainstreaming by DEVCO and the EEAS Juan FERNNDEZ OCHOA

Promoting Gender equality unequally:

Introduction
The links between Gender and the European integration process are rooted in the foundations of the latter. While it is true that no provision addressed Gender-related issues in the Treaty of Paris 1 (1951), the inclusion of Article 119 in the Treaty of Rome (1957) was of crucial importance (Roth, 2005) for future developments. Albeit motivated by economic concerns 2, most authors agree this formal stipulation paved the way for strong initiatives in the following decades (Balme & Chabanet, 2008; Bereni, 2004; Kantola, 2010). Progressively, the concerned actors (feminist groups in the rst stages) were able to access the public arenas of decision-making (Hassenteufel, 2008). To do so, they counted with valuable institutional relays, specially but not limited to the Commission and the European Parliament.

This evolution crystallised a particular Gender regime 3 with a threefold strategy: gender equality, positive action and gender mainstreaming (Kantola, 2010). However, the evolution of Gender policies at the European level have not been neither linear nor awless. On the former, compelling studies have ascertained that the importance of Gender-related policies has not been ever-increasing; on the contrary, periods of stagnation have been identied and given the intuitive name of gendersclerosis (Lister, 2006). Regarding the latter, criticism has been conducted against the superuity of Gender policies and the submission of them to the neoliberal imperatives of the market (Kantola, 2010).

All in all, it would be difcult to contest the existence of a gender regime and its implications in the domestic sphere. This process, that some have baptised europeanisation4 can surpass the boundaries of the Union as a polity. Through the accession protocols, conditionality and enlargement, the European Union has been able to push for the exportation of its Gender regime to countries with perspectives of joining the EU. While as a means of projecting priorities this process has also been criticised, few have proposed to debunk the fact that the accession processes of 2004, as a stereotypical example, encouraged swift downloading of EU policies on matters of Gender. As a whole, europeanisation has relied on hard law (Treaties, secondary norms, case-law) and soft law (communications, declarations) (Kantola, 2010) as well as in the appropriation of certain discourses by inuential actors to reinvest it in political action, a process described as usages of europeanisation (Jacquot & Woll, 2004).

1 2

Also known as the Treaty constituting the European Coal and Steel Community.

Countries like France had an equal pay legislation that could put them in disadvantage vis--vis less Gender-protective norms in other States, such as Germany once the Common Market was in place.
3

We will adopt Elisabeth Prgls denition as cited by Johanna Kantola: institutions, sets of rules that make gendered agencies and structures. As such, regimes are conduits of power: they produce normalised and empowered subjects, but they also routinise power, giving the effects of power permanence and structure.
4

Europeanisation being the adjustment of a variable at the national level to a model, a logic or a constraint of European nature (Jacquot & Woll, 2004)

Governance of the European Union - Dissertation Professor: Cornelia Woll In this sense, we can afrm theres an important body of work that has treated broadly the question of europeanisation from the perspective of Gender within the EU and in its geopolitical vicinity. The same could not be said about the foreign inuence beyond the accession procedures. There is a signicant lack of studies analysing the impact of the EUs Gender regime through its external relations and its programmes of development. This is not to say they are inexistent; in recent times, for example, the dynamics governing the objective of gender-equality in development initiatives have begun to be an object of study (Debusscher & True, 2009); its shortfalls explored (Mushaben, 2006) and the universality/effectiveness of its principles in certain contexts contested (Verschuur, 2009). Nevertheless, there are still questions left open by the Academy which arise when confronting the evidence with the EUs ofcial discourse.

As it was previously stated, one of the pillars of the Gender regime of the European Union is gender mainstreaming. This concept, forged in the Beijing Conference of 1995, reects the evolving importance of Gender issues for the European construction and calls for an overarching concern for this topic. As such, it can be dened as the promotion of gender equality throughout its systematic integration into all systems and structures, into all policies, processes and procedures, into the organisation and its culture, into ways of seeing and doing (Rees, 1998). Such a broad denition implies formal changes, which have materialised inter alia by the enshrining of Gender mainstreaming in Art. 8 TFEU 5 and a series of ofcial Commission communications. But it goes beyond the formal/normative sphere as it urges for structural and even performative transformations in the Unions action and that of its ofcials, even beyond the frontiers of Europe.

Hence, ofcially, all bodies of the EU should be permeated by Gender concerns. Opposed to this declaration of intentions, our main argument is that the bodies of the European Union in charge of its action beyond its borders have been instilled by this imperative in differentiated manner, potentially conditioning their role as vectors of exportation of the EUs Gender regime. The lack of research on the eld will make our theoretical model a rst step towards the exploration of a subject that is of importance for the EUs standing as an international actor. The bodies we are submitting to scrutiny are on the one hand, the Directorate-General EuropeAid Development and Cooperation (DEVCO) and; on the other hand, the European External Action Service (EEAS). Yet, we have to start our study considering the fact that these bodies are under development as their current existence came to be in January 2010. For this reason, we will allow ourselves, when so it will be required, to refer to their essential predecessors; namely the DG Development and DG EuropeAid, in the case of DEVCO and; the DG RELEX in the case of the EEAS.

Theoretical framework
Explaining resilience to Gender mainstreaming within the EU. At the national level, the adaptation to the ever-evolving European constraints has not always been an easy task. Different researchers on the eld of European studies have come up with different explanations for such reticences: some have alluded to the European Union as a weak political order (Fret, 2008) relying on regulatory policies as the central pillar of [its] political activity (Kohler-Koch, 1999); yet others have pointed out to the inertia inherent to domestic structures and even the difculties to assess change when its not

Article 8 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union: In all its activities, the Union shall aim to eliminate inequalities, and to promote equality, between men and women
5

Governance of the European Union - Dissertation Professor: Cornelia Woll conspicuous (Jordan, 2003). But this literature seems to perceive the European Union as a coherent block producing normative sense for it to be incorporated by the national sphere. The study were trying to pursue, requires to abandon such perspectives and understand the European Union as a conglomerate of components which do not necessarily act in concert. Precisely, what we propose is that some bodies of the European Union, in the particular case of our study those being the ones dealing with foreign action, also manifest different levels of adaptation and resilience.

The question is why this adaptation to the EUs gender regime has not been uniform? We can draw a preliminary theoretical framework based on historical institutionnalism (and the concept of path-dependence) as well as organisational studies to nd convincing answers. The former has to do with the idea that contingent historical event[s] trigger a subsequent sequence that follows a relatively deterministic pattern (Mahoney, 2000). Put this way, this idea might appear to be simplistic as, essentially, its proposing that the past matters. However, organisational studies help us narrow our theoretical framework a bit further as we believe the contingencies in the case were studying are not just historical events but precise factors. These factors have conditioned the organisational structure and culture 6 of the bodies were studying in different fashion and, thus, their receptivity to Gender concerns or; in other words, their capacity to learn. The neoliberal diktat and institutionalised patriarchy as general factors of resilience against Gender Mainstreaming Pinpointing the exact variables affecting organisational learning is virtually impossible as the transformations of an organisations culture not only occurs in tangible/salient ways but also in behavioural and even unconscious manner. Nevertheless, the feminist criticism of the EUs Gender regime and gender studies provide our reexion with valuable tools to identify factors saliently conditioning the adoption of Gender as a criterion of paramount importance by the Unions institutions: on the one hand, we consider that the preeminence of economic interests in the european construction has created antibodies against policies that, in their core, are in conict with the market regime that constitutes the subtract of the EU and; on the other hand, we defend that the inuence of patriarchy in the European project contributes to a difcult acceptation of Gender as an overarching concern.

On the former, there are historical and conceptual reasons to defend that economy and the [neo]liberal paradigm occupies a focus of paramount importance in the European integration process. As we mentioned it before, even the inclusion of Art. 119 in the Treaty of Rome had as a purpose to correct market aberrations. In general terms, the foundation of the European Economic Community had growth as a constitutional purpose. By creating a Single Market, the idea was to produce the greatest amount of prosperity for the greatest amount of people (Dutheil, 2010). The involvement of feminist interests came almost two decades after this, during the 1970s and, even then, the evolution towards more daring policies such as Gender Mainstreaming was slow and incremental (Balme & Chabanet, 2008). The [neo]liberal diktat has, thus, a primacy that is embedded in the institutional apparatus of the Union. So much, that instead of promoting analyses of gendered power structures, [gender mainstreaming] has largely meant incorporating the gender question into existing policy frameworks in a technical way and not questioning the power structures and gendered norms underpinning them (Kantola,

Organisations culture as a deeper level of basic assumptions and believes that are shared by members...that operate unconsciously, and dene in a basic taken for granted fashion an organisations view of itself and its environment (Schein, 1985)

Governance of the European Union - Dissertation Professor: Cornelia Woll 2010). By doing so, the European institutions have downplayed the potentiality of this means to achieve gender equality and allowed economic factors to prevail (Debusscher & True, 2009).

In regards to the latter, we believe the EU institutions in charge of carrying out the foreign policy of the EU are not gender neutral but; on the contrary, gendered on the basis of male domination. There are theoretical and empirical reasons to afrm such a claim. We believe Gender is a social category exerting a dichotomising force in the population, creating a hierarchised relation between the resulting [two] sexes (Delphy, 2001). These sexes have been naturalised (Bourdieu, 1998) and the process have produced a division of labour in our societies based on these naturalised behaviours (Folbre, 1998). While most of this work has been carried out at the national and/or local level, other studies have reached the same conclusions in the international arena (Hooper, 2001). Similarly, feminist criticism of the European Union has a lot to do with empirical observations, as none of [the EU institutions] are based on gender-balanced representation (Kantola, 2010).

To sum up what has been said, we can agree to the idea that the role of patriarchy and economic [neo]liberalism has conditioned the adaptation of the EU institutions to Gender mainstreaming. Being repelling forces, we can afrm that the former have contributed to the resilience of a certain organisational structure and, moreover, an organisational culture that has a historical attachment to those factors. In the next section, we will explore how these assumptions are reected by the organisational structure and culture of the institutions responsible for the EUs foreign policy.

Unequal adaptation as a result of the differentiated impact of neoliberalism and patriarchy.

The EEAS and DEVCO. Before tackling the issue at the core of our research, we believe it is important to underline the functions of the different institutions we are analysing. As we hinted before, they are the result of the institutional transformations disposed by the Treaty of Lisbon (2009). On one side, there is the European External Action Service, the result of the fusion of the Commissions Directorate General of External Relations (DG RELEX) and its homologous departments in the Council of the European Union. This hybrid origin explains its heading by a High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy who is accountable to and have responsibilities in the Council and the Commission. In general, this body works as a diplomatic corps for the European Union. On the other hand, there is the DG EuropeAid Development and Cooperation. This body results from the merger of the DG Development, in charge of elaborating the Unions strategies on cooperation for development, and the DG EuropeAid, in charge of implementation. The rationale behind this combination seems to be making the cooperation for development more performant.

Our argument is that the EUs imperative to incorporate Gender concerns in each one of its areas of competence will not be followed equally by the bodies pertaining to external relations and the ones in charge of cooperation for development (be it in their former or current situation). Some studies have already showed there are important differences in gender balance and gender representation in decision-making in regards of the

Governance of the European Union - Dissertation Professor: Cornelia Woll internal and external character7 of a DG; the former reecting considerable under-representation

(Debusscher & True, 2009). But we are looking for variations, and reasons thereof, between two institutions that have a vocation to represent the Union beyond its borders. In this sense, for us, patriarchy and neoliberalism intertwine to condition the level of adaptability to Gender concerns of the two bodies were dealing with in different manner. From realism to neoliberalism: gendered understandings of the State in an international context. The Westphalian State, fundamental unit of the realist paradigm, draws on the Hobbesian idea that nature inclines men to anarchy. Organised around the principle of sovereignty, the State has to rely on self-preservation and constant competition in a seemingly predatory world stage. This idea of the State and its power is anthropomorphic and, thus, gendered. Its subtract is a form of hegemonic masculinity that is the perspective of elite white men based on the ideal of the gloried male warrior (Tickner, 2001). While some Nation-States still overtly exalt the stereotype of the man-warrior as the archetype of masculinity 8, the conception of the State and of Gender relations have mutated in signicant manner in the last decades.

The place of the European Union as a polity in the concert of nations is not that of a Westphalian State based on a warring masculinity; on the contrary, different authors have alluded to the concepts of civilian power or even trading state to characterise its nature. Michael Smith defends the idea of the Union as a trading state based on three aspects: its post-sovereign nature, its consociational role in the international arena and its concerns for the protection of individuals an key groups (M. Smith, 2004). The idea of the Union as a trading state is consonant with with the shift in International Relations from a now bygone dominance of [neo]realism to the acceptance of [neo]liberalism as an hegemonic multifaceted paradigm. This model implies not only a certain standing in the international arena, but the Unions structural linkage to an economic model opposed to unnecessary interventionism or redistribution (Georgakakis & Lassalle, 2007) and, also, a new way to understand Gender relations. In this new model, men cease to be ghting stags and a bourgeois-rationalist model of masculinity achieves hegemonic status. Masculinity becomes less aggressive, more egalitarian and democratic (Hooper, 2001).

However, neoliberalism does not question patriarchy; the model pretends itself to be more scientic (Tickner, 2001) but it opposes this rationality to feminine dependency, emotionality, and bodily enslavement (Hooper, 2001). Hence, it perpetuates a naturalised division of tasks based on Gender, a heritage of the strongly patriarchal structures that gave origin to the State itself (Tickner, 2001). The compelling nding made by Debusscher and True (Debusscher & True, 2009) indicates that, while there has been a domestication of male dominance, its still present and follows rather traditional patterns: women, who have traditionally been associated with the private sphere are now more present in decision-making structures pertaining to the internal issues of the EU while; men, traditionally dominating the public sphere, are more visible in the external bodies of the Union. But we expect to see variations even in bodies of external nature like the EEAS and DEVCO; divergences dependent on the values they represent.

According to the work of True and Debusscher, internal will mean that the policy of the DG has an impact within the borders of the European Union, while external implies a foreign implication (Debusscher & True, 2009).
8

A great body of work, for example, has dedicated much attention to masculinity in the Western Balkans; specially to countries having experienced traumatic internal conict (Derens, 2006; Moss, 2002).

Governance of the European Union - Dissertation Professor: Cornelia Woll Gendered division of tasks in the EUs foreign-action bodies. Gender mainstreaming has tried to instil Gender concerns and equality in all actions of the European Union. However, we have seen how patriarchy and the neoliberal paradigm burden the application of this principle; they have acted as factors of resilience hindering the adaptation of the EU institutions. In this light, even if its formally codied, Gender mainstreaming does not question the structural inequalities between men and women, it perpetuates a sedimented masculinity that legitimises a division of labour based on naturalised interests (Prgl, 2010). Even after forty years of strong feminist lobby at the EU level, the masculine keeps being associated with rationality, autonomy, prudence, strength, power, logic, boundary setting, control, and competitiveness while downgraded qualities [such as] intuition, empathy, vulnerability, and cooperation are associated with the feminine (Hooper, 2001). This division acts as an organising principle of economic, social, and political life (idem) and we expect to see this cleavage reected by the unequal adaptation of the EU institutions representing the EU abroad.

Concretely, we expect to see a stronger commitment with Gender mainstreaming and Gender concerns by DEVCO and its predecessors. This has to do with the fact that the cooperative aspect of its work is linked to a feminine value, something very clear in the [neo]realist imagery. While it is true that we have defended that the [neo]liberal paradigm and its model of masculinity nuanced this belief, we have also stated that it did not contest radically the existing Gender dichotomy and the division of taks it entails. On the contrary, it perpetuated the naturalisation of behaviours. In this sense, it would be naive to disregard the force of past dependencies from previous institutionalisations (Prgl, 2010).

However, the androcentric strategies adopted by women to reach high-ranking positions in governmental institutions at the national level could offer a valid counter-argument. Groundbreaking work carried out at the national level has demonstrated that women look for legitimacy by trying to become like men; opting for highlevel positions on hard issues (Ruane, 2006). Indeed, it might be possible that these dynamics can be observable at the EU level. Nevertheless, the author does not dismiss the possibility for women to opt for the seemingly easier path of accessing positions of power related to soft issues associated with women (idem).

While there is a scarcity of data concerning this subject, we think preliminary evidence will demonstrate that DEVCO has been able to adapt more efciently to the mandate of Gender Mainstreaming. In the following section we will try to shed light on the issue by suggesting a series of indicators that might serve as an empirical proof for this unbalanced evolution.

Assessing unequal adaptation to Gender mainstreaming by the bodies of the European Union in charge for its action abroad.
Gender balance in senior-management positions. In general terms, organisational learning, or adaptability, is a complex procedure. It has been characterised as very conservative and path dependent (Jordan, 2003). Hence, to identify the degree of commitment to Gender equality of different bodies within the EU is not an easy task. Nevertheless, some authors have made a strong case for believing gender mainstreaming can be transformative, that it has the potential to change both organisational structures and the contents of policies and legislation (Kantola, 2010). To prove this potential can take us, then, rst to observing the hardware of the organisation itself, its structures and bureaucracy.

Governance of the European Union - Dissertation Professor: Cornelia Woll

Beveridge and Nott agree that gender mainstreaming can only be transformative if it enhances the participation and inclusion of women in decision-making (Beveridge & Nott, 2002). Thus, the Gender balance in the structures were studying can give us important hints to identifying differentiated integration of gender mainstreaming in those bodies. Previous work have already identied signicant patterns in this distribution amongst now inexistent Directorate-Generals (Table 1). All the external DGs presented very low levels of implication of females, and the predecessors of the EEAS score particularly low if we are to compare them with the DG in charge of implementation of development policy (DG EuropeAid). While the DG Development is a clear outlier, to the extent it did not have in 2007 any female personnel in its senior management, these numbers constitute preliminary evidence to our hypothesis to the extent the predecessors of DEVCO seem to score better in matters of Gender balance. Table 1. Gender Balance in policy-making senior positions in 2007 DG DEVCO EuropeAid Development EEAS RELEX RELEX-DEL 1 1 14 19 15 20 6.7% 5% 1 0 7 6 8 6 12.5% 0% Female Male Total % Female

Sources: (Debusscher & True, 2009)

While it might be a little bit too early to evaluate the balance of gender in the senior management of DEVCO and the EEAS, as both are still in the making and important posts remain vacant; it could help us to motivate further research in that sense. Table 2 suggests that both the highest posts and the sectorial directorates of DEVCO and the EEAS are dominated by pronounced gendered cleavages. Against our hypothesis, we could posit that were we to include the Heads of Unit working for DEVCO, the situation would be inverted. However, Heads of Unit do not have yet a homologous position in the EEAS and; thus, it would be awed to include them. Independently, we cannot ignore that, at least in its current state, gender balance in DEVCO and EuropAid seems to conrm our hypothesis of a masculine dominance in the EEAS.

Table 2. Gender Balance in management in 2011 Institution DEVCO DirectorateGeneral and entourage Sectorial directorates EEAS Corporate Board Sectorial directorates Female Male Total % Female

2 3 2 0

6 7 3 6

8 27.78% 10 5 6 18.18%

Sources: (Publications_Ofce, 2011)

Governance of the European Union - Dissertation Professor: Cornelia Woll Lastly, though analogous structures in DEVCO will be hard to nd, our hypothesis can be strengthened evaluating the clear dominance of males in the position of Heads of Delegations (Ambassadors of the European Union in non-Member States). For example, in 2010, about 90% of the EUs Ambassadors were men (Formuszewicz & Kumoch, 2010). Ambassadorial duties being the epitome of the external action in the public/ international sphere and calling for masculine values as we have dened it beforehand, these statistics do not come across as dissonant. Diverging structures and practices in different DGs. While it could be afrmed that all the governing bodies at the EU level are dominated by men, some entities go to greater efforts than others to counterbalance this bias. Three strategies can be identied from our research: one of them, has been to constitute in-house expert groups; another strategy has been to rely on the dialogue with external research and resource organisations, who provide valuable expertise and information (Basu, 2003) and; the last one, relies on focal points, designated EU ofcials who follow formations in order to gain knowledge on the issue and apply it in policy-making. We will consider strategies that require for a commitment in time to be more efcient as those relying on temporary or part-time strategies for the the latter underestimate the expertise required to develop and implement gender-sensitive methodologies in policy making (Debusscher & True, 2009).

The existence of networks of focal points might encourage the socialisation of its members into the imperative of incorporating Gender concerns in the functioning of their DGs; however, we think their rank in the internal hierarchy of each DG might affect their capacity to inuence the overall policy-making process. This precise information is not publicly available and would require further research within the EU institutions to shed light in this regard. However, we know the implication of the different DGs in these networks is not equal. We will concede that there exists one informal Network of Gender Focal Points (...) formed by representatives of Directorates General of the Commission dealing with external relations and development cooperation as well as representatives of EC delegations (European_Commission, 2006). Thus, we know that, even if its functioning is obscure, the predecessors of DEVCO and the EEAS were, to some extent, involved together in the pursuit of more efcient gender mainstreaming in foreign action.

However, of the three, only DG AIDCO 9 had a Network for EC Gender focal persons. It was established in 2007 with the participation of 66% of the European Commission Delegations (now of the European Union) and it has carried out workshops to apply gender equality in development policy (Debusscher & True, 2009). Similarly, there exists since 1999 a Group of Experts on Gender Equality in Development Co-Operation, that is chaired by the Commission and in the which participation relies on the Member States, discussing gender and development in the context of EU and international major events (Kantola, 2010). The link between Gender and development seems, in this sense, robust; even if most of these networks are informal and represent the lightest commitment from the DGs.

In what concerns the strongest commitment to Gender mainstreaming, establishing a permanent structure within the DG, neither the DG DEV, nor the DG AIDCO or the DG RELEX had an institutional in-house unit of gender experts. Nevertheless, Debusscher and True point out that by 2007 DG AIDCO had manifested, and budgeted,
9

A conventional name to refer to the DG EuropeAid; it stands for EuropeAid Co-Operation Ofce

Governance of the European Union - Dissertation Professor: Cornelia Woll the contraction of experts outside of the EUs institutional framework (consultants) to work with the DirectorateGeneral since January 2008 (Debusscher & True, 2009).

Table 3. Gender mainstreaming (GM) actions and references in DGs reports. Institution/predecessors DEVCO DG DEV DG AID EEAS DG RELEX 1 2 3.92% 2 Multiple 3 5 15.69% References to Gender in DGs 2006 annual report Actions involving Gender mainstreaming (2007) % of total GM actions by the DGs* (2007)

Sources: (Hafner-Burton & Pollack, 2009) *Of all 41 DGs, we will exclude the actions by DG Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion, as it is a major outlier (44% of the total of 91 actions).

Finally, we will posit that the work of the DGs that preceded DEVCO shows a considerably higher engagement with the mandate of gender mainstreaming than the one manifested by the spiritual predecessor of the EEAS. As we can see in Table 3, what became DEVCO was in 2007 in charge, according to ofcial documents by the European Commission, of 16% of the actions on gender mainstreaming engaged by all 41 DGs (For comparative purposes explained hereinafter, we have excluded the DG Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion. This percentage makes RELEXs 4% seem weak and could be seen as a sign of poor attention by the entities in charge of the diplomatic representation of the EU for Gender as an objective of privileged importance. The information available about structures and actions seem to corroborate our main hypothesis. Increasing nancial commitment of development budget vs. Illegibility of the budget of RELEX. Between the rst years of the 2000s, until 2007, there was a manifest stagnation in what regards the evolution of the budget specically allocated for Gender equality of the EU through the Gender Budget Line (GBL); a sign of what Jacqui True and Petra Debusscher came to call gendersclerosis (Table 4) (Debusscher & True, 2009). Nevertheless, in their work they had already foreseen a change of tide to the benet of more resources for the Unions funding of Gender initiatives in the framework of development cooperation. This change of heart has been clearly demonstrated by a soaring budget10 that has been recently reviewed (DEVCO, 2010) in such a manner that it will represent an increase of 246% of the allocations existing before the gender-sclerotic period of the rst half of the 2000s.

10

In 2007, the Gender Equality line of the Investing in People budget for development cooperation replaced the Gender Budget Line.

Governance of the European Union - Dissertation Professor: Cornelia Woll Table 4.Evolution of the budget allocated for Gender in development cooperation (funds available). 15.0 12.5 10.0 7.5 5.0 2.5 0 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13
5.00 3.30 2.50 2.90 2.80 2.80 1.40 2.00 2.00 8.14 8.14 8.14 8.14 12.30 12.30 12.30

Sources: (Debusscher & True, 2009), (DEVCO, 2010).

Contrary to these overwhelming progression in matters of development cooperation towards a more genderaware Union, we have not seen in the rest of the foreign competences of the EU a similar behaviour. All the mentions of Gender in the last Annual Activity Report of the DG External Relations (2009) are derivative; Gender is not seen as a category on its own but as a complement of the development cooperation strategy or the Human Rights strategy. This integrative approach, that feminist authors have already denounced (Kantola, 2010) makes Gender mainstreaming efforts by the predecessors of the EEAS illegible. As a result, there is absolutely no mention of Gender in the Annex 3 of the Annual Activity Report of DG RELEX concerning budgeting (DG-RELEX, 2009). As no reports on the EEAS budget have yet been made, we cannot conclude if the new institutional arrangement will change its strategy.

Conclusion: beyond diverging patterns of adaptation to gender mainstreaming.

The progression of gender equality as a priority for the European integration project is clearly reected by its advanced Gender regime. While in the rst years, concerns were limited to correcting market aberrations, the Union does signicant effort to urge its Member States, its applicants for adhesion and even its institutional framework to give steps forward towards a fairer relation between women and men. Gender mainstreaming is supposed to represent that goal, and its constitutionalisation by art. 8 has the vocation to lead towards it. However, we know its application has been sub-optimal and the explaining variables for these aws are the object of academic research.

Our research did not try to pinpoint the precise and exclusive variables conditioning the adaptation of EU institutions to the normative mandate of incorporating Gender concerns to its policy making, but it has offered compelling theoretical and empirical proof to believe the neoliberal diktat and patriarchy work together to fashion patterns of compliance. Isolating the effect of these independent variables is not simple, and we have stressed how delicate is to identify factors for organisational learning, but we believe the institutions studied help us in this sense. DEVCO and the EEAS, as well as its predecessors, both work in bringing Europe beyond the frontiers of the polity itself; they are in charge of crafting the EUs foreign action in two distinct areas: development cooperation, in the case of the rst and; diplomatic representation in general terms for the second.

The ofcial discourse has acted as if institutions channeling the power of the EU are gender-neutral; something that, for us, is far from being true. On the contrary, the exercise of power is gendered and the nature of these

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Governance of the European Union - Dissertation Professor: Cornelia Woll institutions conditions their permeability to Gender mainstreaming; in other words, their active commitment to Gender equality. While external relations have been traditionally associated with a hegemonic dominating masculinity and masculine values, development cooperation relies on feminine values; associations that the neoliberal paradigm has not radically contested and even has perpetuated. While theres enough theoretical evidence to agree on this, we went beyond the symbolic to nd tangible indicators of this differences and we found them in the composition of the elites in charge for decision-making, in structures and practices and in the nancing tools.

All in all, we believe further research is necessary to underpin our main argument and enrich it with new ndings. We suggest two lines of research in this sense: on the one hand, as we have mentioned in different occasions, the EEAS and DEVCO are bodies undergoing signicant transformations and, even if their nal structure seems to be already set for both, their performance cannot be fully assessed in the current state; for example, important decision-making positions have not yet been attributed, which makes it hard to study Gender balanced representation at the senior-management level. For this reason, a follow-up seems necessary to see if the tendencies that we have observed will prevail or be changed under the aegis of a feminine leadership, that of the High Representative, Mrs. Catherine Ashton.

On the other hand, we consider important to carry out eld research involving both bodies, and even a third as a control group. The variables and processes that we have studied have considerable implications in the register of the symbolic and the unconscious; hence, studying behaviours, practices, acts of speech and personal dispositions seems like having the potential to shed light in this subject and make the causal link still more apparent.

Finally, we cannot avoid bringing attention to the implications that these diverging strategies vis--vis Gender equality by the institutions we have studied might have at the international level. Some authors have already expressed concern for the consequences of a suboptimal approach to Gender equality by the European Unions foreign policy (Debusscher & True, 2009; Kantola, 2010), specially as it has been adduced that the international legitimacy of the Union is linked to its condition as a civilian or normative power (Debusscher & True, 2009). This concept is strongly linked to a certain brand of democracy that is particularly demanding when it comes to protecting the rights of minority groups (Kopstein & Steinmo, 2008), such as women. Nevertheless, the evidence we have found puts in question this commitment, something that might contribute to the Unions apparent lost of credibility as a civilian power, a trend that some authors have defended in the last years (K. Smith, 2005).

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