Gender, Justice and Democracy in The European Union

Introduction The central concern of this book is to explore what democracy looks like in today’s European Union (EU). The multilevelled arrangements that characterise EU governance call for a reflective, theoretically driven understanding of how democracy works, or does not work, in this complex setting. To aid this analytical task, this book presents three models designed to elicit a clearer understanding of the democratic character and quality of the EU polity: audit democracy, federal multinational democracy and regional-cosmopolitan democracy. This chapter takes these three models and considers what form of democracy each one delivers from a gender justice perspective. It approaches the question of democracy in the EU through reflecting on the incorporation of gender as an essential aspect of decision-making in this multilevelled polity. As the EU is an essentially contested entity, adopting a gender perspective on the EU models illuminates the principles and institutional arrangements on which this system could, or should, be based. Because there is no consensus around which principles and institutional arrangements deliver the most appropriate democracy in an EU setting, a gender view on these issues adds important insights to this debate. The models permit us to consider the gendered implications of different democratic arrangements, along with the present status of gender democracy in Europe.