The EU has a “High Level Group on Gender Mainstreaming”. What is it up to?

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D. | February 8, 2014

A friend recently sent me this document:

 

I wasn’t aware that the EU had such a High Level Group. A Google search led me to the European Commission’s website, which informed me that indeed such a group exists. It is “an informal group created in 2001 and comprises high-level representatives responsible for gender mainstreaming at national level. It is chaired by the European Commission at regular meetings convened in close collaboration with the Presidency.”

This raises some questions:

  • First of all, what is “gender mainstreaming”?
  • Second, does “informal” mean that there is no legal base for this group? If so, why does it exist, and why is the European Commission chairing it?
  • Third, is “gender mainstreaming”, whatever it is, compulsory for Member States?

My search in EurLex, the central database on all EU legislation and policy documents, led to the result that there currently is no legislative act in which this term is ever mentioned. The term appears in various (non-binding) resolutions of the European Parliament, but no legally binding texts.

There is one “Commission Communication on the Implementation of gender mainstreaming in the Structural Funds programming documents 2000-2006” in which an attempt is made to define “gender mainstreaming”. It runs as follows:

«Gender mainstreaming» involves ensuring that all general measures and operations openly and actively take into account – during planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation – their effects on the respective situations of women and men. It also involves the complementary design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of specific measures and operations to promote equality and to assist women to participate and benefit equally.

Overall, plans and programmes should contribute to improved equality between men and women, and should be able to demonstrate this impact, prior to, during and after implementation.

This definition is not really one: it says what “gender mainstreaming” involves, not what it is. And the text in which it is contained is not a legislative act, but a mere communication without any legally binding effect whatsoever. In other words, “gender mainstreaming” does not exist as a legal term in the EU. Therefore, “gender mainstreaming” cannot be an agreed EU policy.

As a matter of consequence, there can be no legal base for a “High Level Group on Gender Mainstreaming”. Nor should the Commission be chairing it.

So, it seems that bureaucrats from the Commission and Member States’ governments meet in an “informal” working group, in which they impose on citizens a policy without legal basis. The general impression is that we are confronted with a political machinery that is completely detached from even the remotest form of democratic legitimacy.

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