The promotion of gender equality through the EU External Relations
The case of the Global South, Latin America and Colombia
MA Thesis in European Studies
Graduate School for Humanities
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Main Supervisor: Hanna L. Muehlenhoff
Second Supervisor: Claske Vos
2 I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Hanna L. Muehlenhoff for her engagement and insightful advice during the writing of this thesis. Furthermore, I would like to thank all the interviewers that shared their time, knowledge and thoughts with me. Completing this project would have been more complicated without the support of my family and friends (especially fellow students), that have encouraged and supported me throughout the entire process.
3 TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations ... 4
1. Introduction ... 5
2. Literature Review ... 9
2.1 Normative Power Europe ... 9
2.2 EU Approaches to Gender ... 13
2.1.2 Gender within the EU ... 13
2.1.2 Gender in the External Relations ... 15
3. Theoretical Framework ... 18
3.1 Neoliberal feminism ... 18
3.2 Post-colonialism ... 19
3.3 Post-colonial feminism ... 21
3.4 The intersection of categories ... 24
4. Methodological Framework... 26
4.1 Research Design ... 26
4.1.1 Selection of the self ... 26
4.1.2 Time-frame and selection of events ... 29
4.1.3 Selection of the material ... 30
4.2 Research Method ... 36
5. Analysis ... 37
5.1 Gender equality promotion in the Global South ... 37
5.1.1 Westernization ... 38
5.1.2 Genderization ... 42
5.1.3 Othering ... 44
5.2 Gender equality promotion in Latin America... 46
5.2.1 Westernization ... 47
5.2.2 Othering ... 48
5.3 Gender equality promotion in Colombia ... 51
5.3.1 Westernization ... 52
5.3.2 Othering ... 54
5.3.3 Contextualization ... 55
6. Conclusion ... 64
4 LIST OF ABREVIATIONS CEDAW CEPAL EC ECHR ECOSOC EEAS EIGE EU FARC
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean European Community
European Convention on Human Rights United Nations Economic and Social Council European External Action Service
European Institute for Gender Equality European Union
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombia)
GAP Gender Action Plan
GEWE Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment MERCOSUR Southern Common Market (Mercado Común del Sur) MPDL
NGO
Movimiento por la Paz
Non Governmental Organization
TFEU Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights
UN United Nations
VAWG Violence Against Women and Girls
WILPF Women's International League for Peace and Freedom YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association
5 1. INTRODUCTION
Since its foundation back in the post-war context as an alliance to guarantee lasting peace, the European Union (EU) as a political model has been highly contested, both when applauded and when criticized. In 2012 its long-term success was recognized with the Nobel Prize “for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe” (Nobel Prize, 2012). This award “symbolizes the admiration the EU inspires in the world” (Van der Vleuten et al., 2014: 68) and serves as an external reaffirmation of the identity and actorness the EU has built over the years, translated into the main values it embodies, enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (European Union, 2012).
The EU is recognized as a powerful international actor, with a leading role in domains such as humanitarian aid and peace negotiations worldwide. The expectations it poses when it comes to its performance as a gender equality promoter are not lower (Walby, 2004). The progress made by the EU when it concerns gender equality in the last four decades has resulted in the development of a “sophisticated gender machinery” (Van der Vleuten et al., 2014: 74), which goes in hand with the efforts of international institutions to tackle inequalities while being committed to Human Rights principles.
The role of the EU when promoting gender equality within its borders has been highly contested, mainly focusing on reconciliation policies (Lewis, 2006; Morgan, 2008; Guerrina, 2005; Stratigaki, 2004), the implementation of gender mainstreaming (Mazey, 2001; Lombardo, 2006; Stratigaki, 2005; Guerrina, 2003) and domestic violence or sexual harassment and human trafficking (Askola, 2007; Elman, 2007; Zippel, 2004, 2006). When it concerns the task of the EU in gender equality promotion beyond EU borders, its efforts have been mainly framed within the Normative Power Europe approach, understood as the way of promoting ideas and values in the international level without exerting military or economic power, but rather exporting values by attraction and persuasion (Manners, 2001, 2002).
As a gender actor, the EU would be exporting its understandings of gender in transnational policy-making through its European External Action Service (EEAS), the main promoter of European values in external affairs (Guerrina, 2016). Specific strategies such as the “Framework for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Transforming Lives of Girls and Women through EU External Relations (2016-2020)” (European Commission, 2015), show the commitment of the EU for gender equality not
6 only within its borders. Even if the efforts put on that direction are evident, some academics have referred to the EU as “clearly informed by an ambition to be seen as a good international citizen rather than as a response to civil society and women’s movement demands” (Van der Vleuten et al., 2014: 83), and therefore maintain its international reputation as Nobel-Prize winner.
I aim to contribute to the existing literature on the role of the EU in the international arena by studying the discourse of the EU when promoting gender through its foreign policy. The interest of this thesis is to explore whether current EU approaches to tackle gender inequality are based on a comprehensive approach that takes into account the peculiarities of women in other parts of the world and fully considers their points of view, needs and aspirations. The theory that will serve to develop the study is post-colonial feminism. When recognizing the academic literature around the EU as a Normative Power and its embedded colonialism as a form of external diffusion of norms (Meunier and Nicolaïdis, 2006; Borzel, 2009), I find appropriate to focus on the feminist approach since I aim to study the gender dimension of EU values’ promotion.
Considering this scenario, the research question that arises is: Which kind of actor is the
EU when it comes to gender equality promotion through its external relations? This will
be answered by looking at three sub-questions that respond to the three different geographical settings I analyze:
- Which kind of actor is the EU when it comes to gender equality promotion through
its external relations in the Global South?
- Which kind of actor is the EU when it comes to gender equality promotion through
its external relations in Latin America?
- Which kind of actor is the EU when it comes to gender equality promotion through
its external relations in Colombia?
In order to answer to the question, I will rely on a discourse analysis that will allow me to dig into the political implications embedded in discourses. Discourse analysis will reveal which are the subject positions, as in “who can say what about whom when” (Bulbeck, 1998: 207), and the rooted thoughts on specific uses of the language that are later on reproduced in policies and practices.
By questioning the Normative Power Europe, I will analyze whether the way the EU operates in third countries might be an imposition on gender practices that might suit for
7 the European environment but be counterproductive somewhere else. When the context or political dialogue with the local community are not considered and a “one-size-fits-all” approach is applied, the second option might be the outcome. The ultimate goal is to understand to what extent the specific actions that the EU carries out in specific parts of the Global South contribute to enhance gender equality in these areas. The case study I will develop focuses in the South American Region, more concretely in Colombia, which is especially insightful when considering the past of most South American countries as former European colonies, including Colombia. A post-colonial feminist analysis can shed light on the power relations that may still follow a neo-colonial pattern when it comes to the promotion of gender equality.
By writing this thesis I want to put emphasis on the relevance of looking beyond western ways of understanding the world, that are sometimes eclipsed by the prominence of western constructions and frames. This thesis’ relevance is justified by the need to embrace a feminism that goes beyond neoliberal understandings in decision-making spheres, such as the EU. By arguing that institutions such as the United Nations (UN) or the EU have the power and the influence to change world dynamics, it is appropriate to look deeper at the way they export their values and beliefs. The way we think in the local when acting globally with a machinery such as the EU can have direct consequences on the lives of certain communities. As Mohanty stated, “Global economic and political processes have become more brutal, exacerbating economic, racial and gender inequalities and thus, they need to be demystified, reexamined and theorized” (Mohanty, 2003: 509).
I advocate for the need of “re-orienting western feminism” (Bulbeck, 1998), go beyond sexual freedom, reproductive rights and workplace condition to explore the other inequalities and how they are addressed. I will argue that the way to achieve it is by establishing a close dialogue with the third countries where the EU operates, especially with civil society fighting, in that case, for gender equality and women’s rights.
Thesis Outline
After this introduction, the second section of this thesis aims to familiarize the reader with the existing literature on the role of the European Union as a Normative Power when promoting its norms and values abroad. This is later on linked with the approach taken specifically when it comes to gender equality promotion, by offering an overview on the way the EU develops a normative approach on gender within the EU and outside its
8 borders as well as the limitations of approaches such as liberal feminism when building a valid and extrapolated framework.
This literature review will lead to the third chapter, where I develop the post-colonial feminist thought to explain the role of the European Union in a specific setting and policy field. This framework is offered as a possibility to create an inclusive approach to tackle gender inequalities, capable of addressing the power hierarchies and multiple forms of oppression that women in the Global South face.
In the fourth chapter I present the methodological framework, where I justify the selection of the self, the temporal perspective and I explain the material I will analyze, relying both on discourse analysis of existing texts and interviews I had with EU officials and civil society organizations’ representatives working for women’s rights and gender equality in Latin America and Colombia.
In the fifth chapter I develop the main part of this thesis, an analysis of the discourse of the European Union in external relations. I structure this section in three parts that respond to the three different geographical settings I aim to look at: the Global South, Latin America and Colombia.
I will discuss the findings in the conclusion.
Language clarifications
I will refer to the Global South in several occasions when explaining the relations between the northern and the southern hemisphere. The concept refers to the regions of Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania, therefore denoting those areas outside Europe and America that mostly share a low-income and are usually marginalized in a political and cultural way (Dados and Connell, 2012). I will therefore replace the uses of “Third World” for “Global South”, which Mohanty defines geographically as:
“The nation-states of Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South-east Asia, China, South Africa, and Oceania constitute the parameters of the non-European third world. In addition, black, Latino, Asian, and indigenous peoples in the U.S., Europe, Australia, some of whom have historic links with the geographically defined third worlds, also define themselves as third world peoples”.
9 I will avoid the use of controversial concepts that fall into homogenizing people and countries through associations of inferiority that imply “economic backwardness, the failure to develop economic and political order, and connotations of a binary context between “us” and “them”” (McEwan, 2008: 26). For this reason, when referring to former colonies or countries in the southern hemisphere, I will restrict the use of “third world” or “third world women” merely to exact references that scholars used, such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty in “Under Western Eyes” (1988), the article that serves as the connecting thread of the theoretical framework.
I will use the term “former colonies” to refer to those geographical areas that once were part of a European Empire. For the purposes of this thesis, they will be those located in Latin America and colonized by the Spanish Empire since the case study I analyze is a former Spanish colony.
As sensitive as it is to refer to the weaknesses of different kinds of feminism without dismissing one or another, I will refer to “western feminism” as the feminist movements originated in the West that promote equality between men and women. Even if there is no feminist movement called “White Feminism”, it aims to encompass in a popular way all the kinds of feminism promoted in western cultures that address the main forms of inequality that women face in these countries (Haggis and Schech, 2000). It has received several critiques for basing their assumptions on the rights of white middle class women, normally in advantage power positions when compared to those that do not even have access to the same debates (Dixon, 2011).
Third World Feminism has been proposed as an alternative that would consider the diversity of women’s experiences around the world and rejects the idea of universal feminism (Herr, 2014; Tyagi, 2014). For this thesis, I will not consider the term Third World Feminism since it is a way of perpetuating the difference between the Global North and the Global South, which is the reason why I will rely on “Postcolonial feminism”.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2. 1. Normative Power Europe
A central debate regarding European foreign policy is whether it is possible to refer to the EU as an international actor (Tonra & Christiansen, 2004; Larsen, 2004). If the EU is to
10 be considered an actor, the main step from a discursive perspective is to ask what kind of actor is constructed, including what kind of values are articulated and promoted on it.
Despite its recent attempts to highlight the military dimension, as noted in speeches given overseas, scholars point out at the EU as a consolidated civilian soft power and “the first of its kind” (Michalski, 2005:124). This is also corroborated in the core official discourse of the EU. In the words of Federica Mogherini, “we will never use our military strength to threaten or impose anything” (European Commission, 2018, 11:30) - belief that fits within the definition of soft power - but instead, investing in human rights protection, rule of law, democracy and cooperation, and the promotion of these values outside the union, as in, “the European way” (European Commission, 2018, 11:23).
Manners (2002) referred to the European Union as a Normative Power, highlighting its role as a promoter of norms and its ability of mainstreaming what is accepted as “normal” in International Relations (Manners, 2002: 236). According to the author, the normative ethics that define the external relations of the union rely on the set of norms that align with those specified in the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) (Council of Europe, 1950), and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (UN General Assembly, 1948). These would include “peace, liberty, rule of law, human rights and democracy” (Manners; 2002:241-242), core norms that are consolidated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) (European Union, 2007) and the EU promotes also abroad through its external policy.
Mixed opinions arise amongst researchers when it comes to the action of the EEAS and the way it embodies EU values and exports them or its transformative power abroad, as the main discussed topics within the academy. The critical assumptions are though less abundant when compared with the analyses that have framed the EU external action as having a positive or no impact, sidelining the negative consequences their action might have in the countries it operates (Burlyuk, 2017: 1010).
The current debates on Normative Power Europe differ in whether the EU is rather a promoter of norms for global prosperity or just for interests benefiting the EU itself. In the first direction, aligning with Manners, the EU role in International Relations would be to work for the “common good”, as former president of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, expressed (European Commission, 2014), or as a “force for good” (Barbé and Johansson-Nogués, 2008). Therefore, the EU would not be looking for self-interests but promoting an understanding of “what should be done” according to the
11 legitimate and validated norms the EU promotes (Aggestam, 2000; Manners and Whitman, 2003).
On the other less contested way, the EU, through its external action would be, in a conscious or unintended way, dressing up its eurocentrism and just looking for its interests – normally economic ones - everywhere else (Sjursen, 2008; Martin-Mazé, 2015; Versluys, 2008). Within this less contested strand, it is pertinent to discuss the “interests search” from a post-colonial perspective. As Pasture states, “Europe’s colonial history is like a palimpsest in which the ‘after image’ of empire nevertheless shines through, which can effectively be seen in some EU practices up to today.” (Pasture, 2018:546).
One of the concepts associated with the European Union role in International Relations is the idea of “civilizing”. As Duchêne pointed out back in the 70s, the (then) European Community (EC) would represent a “new stage of political civilization” that would act as a civilian power rather than as an empire (Pasture, 2018: 561). In the same direction, Kagan stressed that “the transmission of the European miracle to the rest of the world became Europe’s new mission civilisatrice” (Pasture, 2018: 562). Manners himself explains how the EU represents “a break” from “pre-existing political forms” that separate the current EU from its imperial past and distinguishes it from the rest of the international actors (Pasture, 2018:562).
Pasture has studied how the current EU policies might be displaying a similar pattern when it concerns this “civilizing mission”, sharing structural features with the old empire but differing in the way of performing in third countries, as in without the use of violence, what has been called “soft imperialism” (Hettne and Söderbaum, 2005). The return to colonial practices has been exemplified with the reciprocity in trade agreements that take place in unequal economic relations from which the powerful part takes advantage, therefore creating a paternalistic pattern in EU policies with third countries (Weinhardt and Jones, 2015). EU enlargement policy has been also analyzed from this angle. Researchers have argued that the structural features of EU’s accession policy are the same as the old “civilizing mission” (Pasture, 2018:548) refuting the idea of the EU as an alternative to imperialism by highlighting its, still present, colonial agenda.
The importance of looking at foreign policy from a post-colonial angle is justified by the historical past that seems to have turned in “colonial amnesia” (Pasture, 2018). The fact that not that long ago Europe ruled close to three quarters of the globe and imposed
12 practices all around should be, according to post-colonialism, a reason of reflection in order to avoid committing the same mistakes. According to Pasture, it is somehow worrying that few associate the current EU institutions with the colonial past of the union (Pasture, 2018: 551), which is the reason why it seems relevant to examine this association further.
The relevance of studying these possible neocolonial continuities responds to the observations that Rosecrance put on the table, who noted that it might be a paradox that the empire that once physically imposed their practices is now the one setting standards on peace and human rights in normative terms (Pasture, 2018: 562). According to Pasture, this fact might be paradoxical only if we do not consider the option of continuity, as in “only if one accepts the normative stance that the EU constitutes a radical departure from imperial policies” (Pasture, 2018: 562). These colonial reminiscences would have been integrated in a modernized framework and context, but maintaining the narrative of importing progress in the countries that the EU civilizes through the discourse of “universal” values promoted in its current foreign policy. Pasture suggests that “the emphasis on development and human rights thus underpins a neo-imperialist ‘civilizing mission’ attitude: as Europe managed to overcome its ‘bitter past’, it views itself uniquely situated to ‘teach’ or lecture others” (Pasture, 2018: 564)
Considering gender equality as a fundamental and undeniable human right, as defended by the UN and enshrined in the UN Charter adopted in 1945 that proclaims “equal rights of men and women” (OHCHR, 2018), therefore a “core value” for the EU, I will study the norms’ promotion outside EU borders including a gender approach in the analysis. I will deepen into how the EU externalizes its values when it concerns gender, a domain that has not been highly contested in the literature of Normative Power Europe. It has mainly focused on Development and Cooperation (Smith, 2004; Arts and Dickson, 2004), Trade and economic relations (Brenton, 2002; Meunier, 2007; Meunier and Nikolaïdis, 2006; Damro, 2012) or Security and Defense policy (Manners, 2006; Kinnvall, 2009; Howorth, 2014).
In this paper I will analyze the negative or unintended effects of what it is supposed to be a force for good through the use of “ethical power” (Aggestam, 2008: 1), as in the extent to which Normative Power Europe and the EU performance carried out under this frame share some features with neocolonial thoughts (Babatola et. al, 2012: 1). Since a feminist analysis is the main focus here, I will link the literature on Normative Power Europe with
13 post-colonial feminist theory, an angle that has not been much contested when analyzing the EU External Action. When considered, it has usually been linked with the economic outcomes of including a gender perspective in the EU foreign policy (Van der Vleuten, 2014; True, 2009; Hafner-Burton & Pollack, 2009; Hoskyns, 2008)
Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to study the discourse of the EEAS when projecting European gender normativity, as in the norms promoted in once colonized countries. I will follow Sjursen premise that the norms promoted may vary depending on the cultural or social context, and may be promoting the “common good” somewhere while, intended or unintendedly, be threating the specific culture, society, or identity of other regions (Sjursen, 2006).
2.2. EU approaches to gender
Before getting into the theoretical framework, I offer an overview of the literature on how the EU includes gender in its policies, actions and programmes in order to work for the achievement of equality. The aim is to show that, despite the attempts on promoting gender equality within and outside European borders, the EU has mainly focused on neoliberal practices that have not resulted into a comprehensive understanding of the lives of women and girls around the globe and the promotion of their fundamental rights.
2.2.1 Gender within the EU
Equality between men and women has been a founding priority in the European Project. It was already stablished in the article 119 of the Treaty of Rome (1957) that men and women should get equal pay for equal work (European Union, 1957). What today could be considered a feminist step, was at that time justified solely be economic interests. When drafting the Treaty, France, who already recognized gender equality before the law in its constitution, pressured the rest of member states to avoid the competition of Italian shoemakers, who used low-paid female labor (Ghailani, 2014). Some scholars have referred to this clause and the controversy around it as a metaphor that would set the path the EU would follow onwards, when prioritizing the market over the equality (Hoskins, 1996; Guerrina, 2017). From this line of thought, it is argued that “women acquired equality in Europe as workers rather than citizens” (Guerrina, 2017:101).
The culmination of all the steps taken since the creation of the union until current times is the adoption of Gender Mainstreaming (Mazey, 2000), that takes a step forward in the
14 inclusion of gender equality in every practice or domain (Walby, 2004: 7). The concept of Gender Mainstreaming was first introduced in the Beijing Platform for Action, adopted after the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, in Beijing 1995 (UN, 2002). Gender Mainstreaming was later defined by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) as “the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels.” (ECOSOC, 1997/2). It aimed at promoting equality through “mobilizing all general policies and measures specifically for the purpose of achieving equality”, opposing the strategy called “Women’s Development”, which would be only addressing women’s issues in a marginal way (Vara Arribas and Carrasco, 2003). Hence, Gender Mainstreaming would imply the incorporation of gender concerns in every policy area, program or practice in order to guarantee that equality between men and women was appropriately considered in every stage of policy-making (Mazey, 2001; Guerrina 2017).
Some researchers have pointed out at the difficulties in stablishing a pattern or a clear separation when it concerns gender policies (Lewis, 2006) and have questioned the effectiveness of the Gender Mainstreaming approach in the Treaties when promoting women’s rights and interests (Guerrina, 2017; Charlesworth, 2005). Even if the strategy can be understood as a powerful feminist tool to work towards inequalities, Gender Mainstreaming itself cannot dig into the roots of inequality, which are found in patriarchal constructions embedded in society (Rees, 1998). On the same direction, Charlesworth explains that gender mainstreaming, when included in international institutions such as the UN or the EU, it “detracts attention from the ways that sexed and gendered inequalities are woven into the international system” (Charlesworth, 2005:2), which is itself patriarchal. Therefore, to include gender everywhere would be just a matter of window-dressing, and it would end up being anywhere (Painter and Ulmer, 2002). This is what a branch of feminist researchers refers to as the “paradox of feminism”: whether girls’ and women’s rights are better protected through general mechanisms or through concrete measures that only apply to them (Charlesworth, 2005; Rees, 1998; Young, 1994; Painter and Ulmer, 2002). Critiques on that direction state that “The price of creating separate institutional mechanisms for women has been the building of a “women’s ghetto” with less power, resources, and priority than the general human rights bodies (Charlesworth, 2005).
15 For some, these approaches that the EU takes in gender issues have failed because of insufficient funding or trained staff, that make impossible to address gender inequalities and injustices, even when there is commitment (Petó and Manners, 2006; Pollack and Hafner-Burton 2000). As Manners and Petó quote “despite the positive examples of EU promotion of gender equality through all the work done in mainstreaming and creation of bodies, it is true that commitment itself tell us too little about the political will” (Petó and Manners, 2006: 110).
2.2.2 Gender in the EU External Relations
Since a big part of the literature on gender focuses on how the EU includes gender mainstreaming or economic measures in its internal policies, the gap appears when analyzing EU’s foreign policies (Muehlenhoff, 2017). For instance, the downfalls of gender mainstreaming have mainly been discussed in the EU context (Guerrina, 2003; Kantola, 2010), and few have deepened into it when it concerns enlargement processes and development policy (Bretherton, 1999; Petó and Manners, 2006). Their conclusions point out that Gender mainstreaming, while trying to act as a tool to achieve “unity within diversity”, has not considered the differences that women face within different member-states, ascension states or particularities of countries in the Global South (Petó and Manners, 2006; Bretherton, 1999; Bretherton, 2001; Hoskyns, 2004; Walby, 2005; Charlesworth, 2005). By “mainstreaming” gender inequalities, therefore assuming that all women face the same inequalities for the fact of being women, policy-makers in that case fall into the trap of homogenizing the experiences of women around the world when looking at the inequalities they face from a western perspective.
As introduced earlier, the EU, when addressing gender problématiques, has always focused on women as participants in the workplace as neoliberal subjects, ignoring the social dimension and the structural roots of women’s inequality (Pollack and Hafner-Burton, 2000; Rees, 1998; Hoskyns, 1996). In the external relations domain, Van der Vleuten (2014) establishes the link between gender equality and economic interests, arguing that the action plans and strategies that the EU develops for gender equality abroad evidence that “it sees gender equality as a product for export” (Van der Vleuten et al., 2014: 69).
The discourse used in official foreign policy documents has been analyzed before (Muehlenhoff, 2017). The conclusions show that the EU refers to women as neoliberal subjects, as in “self-responsible individuals with resources for economic development or
16 security” (Muehlenhoff, 2017: 163). Therefore, equality is portrayed in terms of efficiency and emancipation. As an explanation for this bias encountered, academics argue that the dominant frames are too powerful (the neoliberal essence of the EU in that case) to make gender policies and measures work when the system where they are embedded has patriarchal foundations (Charlesworth, 2005). Even when including feminist measures, these are inevitably in line with neoliberal feminist streams, which promote gender equality by, at the same time, denying that socioeconomic and cultural ideas shape women’s lives (Rottenberg, 2018).
Van der Vleuten (2014) argued that, “to live up to its ambitions, and honor its “mainstreaming approach”, the EU should integrate a gender perspective in all areas of development, and not just in ‘human affairs areas’, such as education and health” (Van der Vleuten et al., 2014: 79). The author also adds that exactly in the areas where the EU invests more efforts, “gender is seldom addressed” (Van der Vleuten et al., 2014:80), therefore showing a lack of commitment. Her critique addresses a strategy that includes gender solely under the umbrella of human rights, therefore forgetting about mainstreaming or making changes towards gender equality in every policy field or social and life dimension.
As summarized above, the literature on how the EU promotes gender through its external action has highlighted its neoliberal essence, which seeks for exports and market benefits rather than real results on gender equality, as well as an understanding of self-empowerment, therefore exporting European norms. Even if there is no doubt of the progress made in the last decades to consider gender a priority when policy-making in the EU, the efforts have focused on a EU perspective. If the EU claims that its action is as well necessary outside its borders, it is appropriate to look at the work of the EEAS as a promoter of EU values around the world.
The way the EU deals with gender in third countries has not been much analyzed from a postcolonial feminist perspective. The theoretical framework proposed below will fill this gap, offering as well a critique on Normative Power Europe and its potential post-colonial reminiscences and the roots of the way the EU exports norms in the gender domain. The theory I present serves to explain how power relations between north and south are established, especially when considering the position of women in the Global South and how they are portrayed by western understandings of women’s rights and equality between sexes. Post-colonial feminism might be useful to explain the gap in the literature,
17 which so far has pointed out at the lack of efficiency of gender mainstreaming as a marginal strategy in the international domain, and the ineffectiveness when including gender only as a human rights or human affairs problématique.
Since the big part of the literature that studied the EU action abroad has focused on Africa, especially when linking normativity with post-colonialism (Sicurelli and Scheipers, 2008) or has analyzed the approaches and norms diffusion in the neighborhood and enlargement countries (Bicchi, 2006; Pace, 2009), I will geographically situate the analysis in the Latin American region. The authors that studied this domain have argued that gender is not a priority in EU foreign policy towards the region, where it only plays a marginal role, giving priority to trade liberalization, defined as “one of the central objectives of their interregional relation”, which at the same time plays in detriment of gender equality (Ribeiro-Hoffmann, 2014: 119). In turn, when gender appears to be a priority, the authors have situated the relevance solely in the fields that concern human rights and environmental issues and argue that, in Latin America “gender policy commitments have “evaporated” when put into practice” (Ribeiro-Hoffmann, 2014: 129).
The literature on the role of the EU in Latin America when it concerns gender has mainly analyzed the outcome of certain policies or strategies, such as gender Mainstreaming (Debusscher, 2014: 93), or the lack of commitment in gender action (Ribeiro-Hoffmann, 2014), therefore focusing primarily on European policy implementation in the region (or the lack of it). I will focus my analysis on exploring in a deeper level how power relations are stablished amongst the regions and how the European Union is (or is not) promoting its approach on gender in Latin America.
Since the decolonization processes in South and Latin America took place earlier than they did in Africa or Asia, the anti-colonial feelings are thought to be less alive in Latin America (Ribeiro-Hoffman, 2014: 126). This explains the lack of research on that location and is the reason why I want to contribute to this gap by exploring how, in the 21st century and through Normative Power Europe, these neo-colonial imaginaries might still be active.
This said, the research question that arises is: Which kind of actor is the EU when it comes
to gender equality promotion through its external relations? I will argue that the EU
follows a Eurocentric perspective when tackling gender issues in the Global South when not considering gender from an intersectional perspective that takes into account the context, peculiarities and local approaches in the setting where it operates. I will explain
18 that the cause of the power hierarchies that the EU sets are possibly rooted in a neocolonial understanding of its external action in certain parts of the globe, such as Latin America and Colombia specifically.
3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The theoretical lenses I will use to develop the analysis is postcolonial feminist theory. Before explaining why this theory suits to explain the role of the European Union as a gender norms exporter in the context I analyze, it is relevant to explore the current approach the EU implements when tackling gender inequalities and the gaps it leaves uncovered. I will give an overview of Neoliberal Feminism as the feminist theory that is closer to the gender equality strategies promoted by the EU.
3.1 Neoliberal feminism
From an academic perspective, it has been said that “the market is colonizing feminist themes” (Rottenberg, 2018). This statement is linked with the emergence of neoliberal feminism, understood as the type of feminism that, while recognizing gender inequality, does not consider how social, economic and cultural patriarchal structures shape human lives (Rottenberg, 2018). While it acknowledges for example, the gender wage gap and sexual harassment as obvious signs of disparity, it denies its link with other inequalities, such as socioeconomic or cultural ones.
Neoliberal feminist practices in the EU are those that consider inequality between men and women as connected with economic concerns, such as the equal participation in the labour market. From a neoliberal point of view, women are seen as “individual firms” who should seek for their socioeconomic value and consider their activities as “investments” to improve their “own enterprise”, as in themselves, their well-being and careers (Rottenberg, 2018).
According to some authors, with the rise of neoliberal feminism, the norms and policies on gender equality have been subordinated to the economy (Gregor, 2017:14), following a liberal pattern that links gender equality with efficiency for both the state (or the EU) and the market. Recent examples of this pattern nowadays can be found in the extensive studies carried out and published by the European Institute on Gender Equality (EIGE), such as “Gender Equality Boosts Economic Growth” (EIGE, 2017), which highlights the efficiency for the market. The ones linking the investment in preventing violence against
19 women with savings in social and healthcare systems are also remarkable (Kóvatz, 2017: 5), which emphasizes the efficiency for the state.
Together with the economic focus, the importance of the individual is one of the main points that neoliberal feminism raises, aligning with the neoliberal belief that economic freedom leads to greater agency and freedom of choice for the individual. By proclaiming women as the main responsible subjects in charge of their well-being and empowerment, a vast majority of women are forgotten, such as those not belonging to middle and upper-middle classes that do not have the means to achieve their own empowerment, aspirations, well-being and self-care (Rottenberg, 2018). Considering self-empowerment (and frequently linking it with economic emancipation) as the basic premise, neoliberal feminism is obviating that the unequal power structures are still embedded in society and the individual is dependent upon patriarchal states and institutions. The acceptance of current political and economic structures makes neoliberal feminist, following the classic liberal premises, opt for an attitudinal change rather than structural to improve the position of women in society (Bulbeck, 1998: 7). The discourse that highlights the individual goes in hand with concepts such as “self-empowerment”, “emancipation” or “entrepreneurship”, which guide the European discourse in gender while maintaining and reproducing neoliberal capitalism in the form of feminism (Gregor, 2017:15).
Led by market dynamics and individualism, neoliberal feminism does not consider social justice and therefore, while focusing only on gender, it does not take into account white and class privilege, at the same time that the reasons behind the inequality some collectives suffer go unaddressed (Kovátz, 2017:5). Since my thesis follows this line of argumentation, hereafter I will propose a theoretical framework that will rely on postcolonial feminism as an alternative to critically assess the discourse of the EU, which, when feminist, adopts a neoliberal perspective (Young, 1994; Repo, 2015).
3.2 Post-colonialism
Acknowledging the difficulties of the term itself, I rely on the definition that McEwan proposes to refer to postcolonial studies. The term colonialism has indeed lost its prominence in the 21st century, and post-colonialism, rather than pretending to be a continuation of colonialism or to refer to the period after it, it is understood as the “ways of criticizing the material and discursive legacies of colonialism” (McEwan, 2001: 94). Therefore, it pretends to question how the power relations that were once settled during colonialism eras might still be reproduced, paying special attention to discourse and
20 practices. These dominant discourses, even if unconsciously, are “ethnocentric, rooted in European cultures and reflective of a dominant western world-view” (McEwan, 2001: 94), which is the reason why they need to be critically assessed.
The subaltern “other”
One of the focuses when addressing these structures is the promotion of hegemonic western discourses everywhere else and the way they marginalize other collectives based on their geographical location or colonial history, normally part of the Global South (Spivak, 1988; Kapoor, 2008). By referring to the “other”, dualism is implicit in the distinction promoting a “radical exclusion or hyperseparation”, such as “West/Orient, male/female, white/black, modern/traditional, West/East, active/passive, civilized/primitive, secular/religious, universal/local, culture/nature, intellect/instinct” (Bulbeck, 1998: 45). I will further develop these categories when analyzing the relations between the European Union and South America.
The western is self-portrayed as the one having the authority and the knowledge, and therefore the legitimization to use its power by reshaping the views of non-western communities in their own contexts (McEwan, 2001: 95). As a reaction to this asymmetrical relationship, the main aim of the theory is to give voice to these marginalize collectives and recognize their agency.
Academics such as Edward Said (1978) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) analyzed how the western discourse is clearly highlighting the difference between north and south, by constructing the latter as an inferior entity that depends on the supremacy of the north. Spivak, in her work “Can the subaltern speak?”, exposes the ways in which the north tends to speak for the Global South, not recognizing their agency and constructing an image of them based on western representations that are indeed biased and insist on the colonized subaltern as a homogeneous unpowered subject (Spivak, 1988: 79). This subaltern is characterized in opposition to the western, as in through the contrast between the self and the “other”, the modern and the uncivilized (McEwan, 2001: 94). By referring to it as “Third World”, the West is homogenizing all those countries with poor economic, social or political order, falling into a process of “worlding”, as a specific way to “other” individuals belonging to colonized territories (Spivak, 1990: 114) that makes even more obvious the attribution of power to one of the sides. (McEwan, 2001; Darby, 1997; Spivak, 1990).
21 By speaking of them, the West tends to ignore political, historical, and cultural diversity and it is also dismissing their knowledge and not recognizing it as valid or legitimate. From this perspective, the EU may be seen as an “expert judge” on the norms and values imported. Therefore, its knowledge on how to defend human rights and equality from a universal point of view might be reinforcing a superior expertise that does not consider the local knowledge of the third countries (Baaz, 2005). The extent to which the EEAS involves itself within local points of view will be analyzed in order to assess whether they
speak of or with them.
3.3 Post-colonial feminism
Post-colonialism and feminism share some ideas in the sense that they both focus on forms of oppression by dominant ideologies, and normally use words such as “oppression”, “subversion”, “marginalized” or “other” in their discourses (Mishra and Hodge, 1994: 284). The intersection of both postcolonial and feminist thought is meant to address the “double colonization”, as in the status of women in a postcolonial world, oppressed both by colonial and patriarchal ideologies. This intersection brings as a result postcolonial feminist, a theory that aims at tackling this particular form of inequality by focusing on how women are colonized by both imperialism and male dominance. Spivak refers to this double marginalization as an evidence: “If, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow” (Spivak, 1988: 83). Therefore, feminism in a postcolonial context considers the situations of ordinary women in particular places by highlighting “the degree to which women are still working against a colonial legacy that was itself powerfully patriarchal - institutional, economic, political, and ideological” (Mishra, 2013:130).
As defined by Schwarz and Ray (2005), “Postcolonial feminism is an exploration of the intersections of colonialism and neocolonialism with gender, nation, class, race, and sexualities in the different contexts of women’s lives, their subjectivities, work, sexuality, and rights” (Mishra, 2013:130), pointing at its link with Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989). It was especially in the 1980s, when black women started to bring to the table the diversity in women’s oppression (Bunch, 1987), as well as the influence of racism and imperialism that dismiss the agency of non-white or non-western women (Lorde, 1984; Sandoval, 1991; Carby, 1997; Herr, 2014). From some feminist perspectives, mostly belonging to the second-wave, women are to be considered a homogeneous group that
22 suffers from the same violations of their rights in patriarchal systems, merely because of their gender or sex (Tong, 2009; Herr, 2014). In that context, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the concept of “Intersectionality” in 1989, when proposing “a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects” (Crenshaw, 2017:1).
Post-colonial feminism takes intersectionality as one of the main foundations of the theory. It argues that the oppression women face vary according to other factors, such as their race, social class, or their colonial background, separating itself from more self-proclaimed Universalist perspectives that they still consider as western ones, therefore solely focused on the rights of white middle class women living in the West (Lorde, 1984; Davis, 1983; Mohanty; 1988). According to Lorde, “The Master’s Tools will never dismantle the Master’s House” (Lorde, 1984), as in western feminism will never be able to make positive change for “third world women” since the tools they use are the same ones that patriarchy uses to oppress women. Mohanty refuses these Universalist claims of white global feminists, stating that women in non-western countries are portrayed as “a cross culturally singular, homogeneous group with the same interests, perspectives, goals and similar experiences” (Mohanty; 1991:3), falling into homogenization, reductionism and essentialism.
Mohanty suggests that the texts she analyzes, normally academic production, “discursively colonize the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third world, thereby producing/representing a composite, singular “third world woman” (Mohanty, 1988: 62), characterized by a western humanist discourse. I will analyze European Union Foreign Policy texts from the same angle.
Mohanty’s ultimate goal is to allow “third world women” to defend their agency and raise their voice against imperial practices (Mohanty, 1988). She argues that the West has constructed a specific “third world women as a single monolithic subject” (Mohanty, 1988; 61) and has defined the relation between the West and “the other” in terms of hierarchical power structures. Mohanty points at five specific ways in which the “third world women” are constructed, always from the shared premise that they are a “homogeneous powerless group often located as implicit victims of particular cultural and socio-economic systems”, and normally “defined in terms of their object status” (Mohanty: 1988: 66). The categories that Mohanty pointed, as the more common way of portraying “third world women” as victims of male violence, as universal dependants,
23 married women as victims of the colonial process, women as part of patriarchal familiar systems, women as religious subjects and women as part of the (economic) development process (Mohanty, 1988). All these attributions point out at the “theoretical reductionism” that western feminism uses when talking about women in the Global South (Crowley, 1991).
Mohanty assessed that just for the fact of being a woman a set of adjectives are going to be associated with them, such as “sexually constrained” or “weak”. When to that social disadvantage we add the belonging to a “third world woman” category, it is possible to broaden the scope to words such as “ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, religious, domesticated, family-oriented, victimized”. (Mohanty, 1988: 66).
From the “oppressed women” to the “oppressed third world women”, defined as religious (not progressive), family oriented (traditional), legal minors (still not conscious of their rights) illiterate (ignorant) domestic (backwards) and sometimes revolutionary (their country is in a state of war, they must fight!) this is how the third world difference is produced.
(Mohanty, 1988: 80)
The deconstruction of the western discourse does not only pretend to address the stereotypes when referring to “third world women” but also the other way around: western women are normally portrayed as liberated and in control of their life and responsible of their wellbeing and empowerment (Mohanty, 1988).
The discursive intersection I want to analyze follows her research and, rather than studying feminist academic texts (Mohanty, 1988), I will study official discourses such as those produced by the EEAS when referring to gender equality in the Global South. Since there is much literature on black women addressing privileged white women, especially in the US (Bell and Klein, 1996; Mohanty, 1988; Lorde, 1978; Davis, 1983; Hooks, 2000; Narayan, 1998), I will focus on analyzing the discourse from a postcolonial feminist perspective in a South American country. As postcolonial feminists also advocate to include indigenous and other Third World feminisms into the mainstream feminist debates (Kumari, 1986), I will include these thoughts into my analysis as well.
From a postcolonial feminist perspective I can study the way the EU is using neoliberal feminism and framing it into a Normative Power Europe approach, and whether it is disregarding other forms of oppression that go beyond the gender condition. When looking at postcolonial structures, it is particularly important to examine foreign policy. Reinforcing postcolonial narratives in foreign policy would mean a continuation of
24 imperial practices. I will mainly rely on Chandra Mohanty’s framework to analyze colonial discourses and develop a postcolonial feminist discourse analysis on how the EU is exporting the discourse on gender through the EEAS in Colombia. By picking the South American region and focusing on a specific country, it will be possible as well to spot whether the “third world homogenization” is a pattern in EU discourses. Even if Latin America is a setting known for sharing cultural, political and economic similarities, all the countries that constitute it are different entities that should not be approached under the “one-size-fits-all-(former-colonies)”.
3.4 The Intersection of Categories
The research question that I want to answer based on the theory is the following: Which kind of actor is the EU when it comes to the promotion of gender equality through its external relations? In order to answer the question by looking at post-colonial feminist
categories of analysis, and responding to the framework presented below, I will follow the four main categories detailed on table 1: “westernization”, “genderization”, “othering” and “contextualization”, them being the main points of critique that the post-colonial feminist theory addresses.
By looking first at what I have called “westernization”, I will develop the ways in which the Eurocentric approach is being transferred in the Global South. I will consider whether the action of the EU when it concerns gender is based on the norms promoted through Normative Power Europe, taking the Human Rights umbrella as the main one and the Neoliberal feminist branch as the main approach to gender, as described above.
To develop the concept of “Double Colonization”, I will be looking first at the ways the discourse is gendered according to patriarchal ideologies to later focus on the ways women in the third world are represented through “othering” or “worlding” strategies, following Imperial patterns (Spivak, 1988).
The process of “gendering” is understood as the attribution of certain concepts and ideas to men or to women, responding to what is socially accepted as such only basing the assumptions on sex categories. When considering “gendering”, the practices I will be looking at refer to both the use of binary categories to talk about men and women and the use of stereotyped representations.
Under the “othering” bloc, I develop the categories that Mohanty and other post-colonial authors referred as “othering” strategies, such as the homogenization of the third world
25
woman, the dual representations and the “expert judge” approach. The dualism refers to the strategy through which the EU distinguishes between the western and the southern individual and all the attributes that define both. The “expert judge” approach will highlight in which ways the power hierarchies are stablished, by speaking of the “other”, considering it as an inferior entity or assuming that the western self has to provide the “other” with the western knowledge and expertise.
In order to approach the gender inequalities in a specific setting, it is crucial to implement a field approach that considers each of the particularities, therefore avoiding the implementation of a “one-size-fits-all” approach that responds to a European-made framework. The last category I propose, “contextualization” will serve to dig into the particularities of the context I analyze. In this part I discuss whether the EU includes or not intersectionality and adapts itself to the needs of the country or region, by also considering the peculiarities, such as the post-conflict situation in that case. I only apply this last scenario in Colombia since this is the region where I had the opportunity to dig into the context by talking to associations and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) working for oppressed collectives, victims of race, class, gender and sexual discrimination.
I will organize the analysis in three sub-divisions: gender equality promotion in the Global South, in Latin America and in Colombia. In the three blocs I will look into the categories specified in table 1. By looking at them it will be possible to conclude whether the EU actorness still has some post-colonial reminiscences, hidden under the category of Normative Power Europe, that can be explained through the lens of post-colonial feminism.
Categories of analysis Dimensions to analyze “WESTERNIZATION” - Human rights umbrella
- Normative understandings - Neoliberal feminism “GENDERIZATION” - Binary categories
o Men/women
- Stereotypical representations o Victims/perpetrators o Powerless/powerful
26 - Dualist representations : “West/Orient, white/black,
modern/traditional, , civilized/primitive,
secular/religious, universal/local, culture/nature, intellect/instinct”
- Expert judge
o Speaking of them
o The “other” as an Inferior entity o EU as knowledge provider CONTEXTUALIZATION - Intersectionality
- Post-conflict situation - Dialogue with civil society Table 1: Categories to analyze in the discourse.
4. METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK 4.1. Research design
This thesis analyses the role of the EU as a global promoter of the gender equality norms towards the Latin American region, with a specific focus on Colombia, through an analysis of the discourses employed by the EU and local organizations working for women’s rights and gender in the region. In the following part, I will present the methodological framework that I will use to develop the analysis later on. I will rely on the proposal that Lene Hansen (2006) made to analyze the political discourse employed during the Bosnian War (Hansen, 2006). She suggests four main dimension to consider when carrying out a discourse analysis on foreign policy: 1) delimitation of the object of study, 2) time frame, 3) events to study, 4) selection of the material (Hansen, 2006). This approach is suitable to analyze the role of the EU as an international promoter of gender equality through its external policy.
4.1.1 Selection of the self
Hansen defines the self as the object of study, which can be limited to a single one or be a comparison of different entities or discourses (Hansen, 2006: 76). For the purposes of this thesis, I am focusing on a single self, such as the EU, that will be contrasted with its “other” – organizations in Latin American countries working for gender equality- in order to get a deeper understanding of how the main self is constructed and constructs its “other”.
27 Hansen points at constructions of inferiority and superiority in discursive encounters that are linked to political power (Hansen, 2006: 78). I will analyze the discourse of the EU – specifically through the EEAS- as a representative of Normative Power Europe, focusing specially on how this power is deployed in Latin America and how it fits or clashes with the discourse in the countries of the region. The way the European Union is perceived abroad may vary: “it might be constituted as threatening, but it might also be an ally, a stranger, or an underdeveloped subject in need of help” (Hansen, 2006: 68). By studying the construction of the EU’s actorness in the area I will determine how the Union performs and how it is perceived in the setting, and therefore answer my research question.
The EEAS – the official discourse
The reason why I will mainly focus on the discourses employed by the EEAS is because it is the main “exporter” of EU values abroad through the 193 delegation the EU has around the world. It is therefore the main representative of Normative Power Europe and its role in promoting EU identity abroad is crucial, also when it concerns gender. Some of the texts I analyze are co-created by the EEAS, the European Commission and some programmes that derive from it, such as EUROsociAL a ramification of the DG DEVCO, European Commission, that focuses especially on social cohesion in Latin America. All the official documents I will be looking at have been prepared by the EEAS or for the needs of that agency, which is the reason why they can be included under the same framework and are relevant for the study of the self.
The Latin American “other” – the marginal discourse
Hansen discusses the complexity in the comparison of the selves, arguing that incorporating discursive encounters is especially interesting when there is a clear identification of the “other” and a counter-discourse can be spotted (Hansen, 2006:77). In this case, the “other” is defined as the non-European one, but it is not sure whether the discourse is an opposition to the self (EEAS) or whether they align. The identification of the “other” that I want to analyze in this case will be represented by the local organizations that work for gender equality in the region. This way I will focus on the “double colonization” mentioned in previous chapters: the colonized “other”, as in the native in the Latin American region, and the female one, as the one also oppressed by patriarchy (Tyagi, 2014: 45).
28 Since the constructions of actors are normally based on opposition, it makes sense to study the “subaltern” (Spivak, 1988) for the western region. From a postcolonial point of view, this construction is based on the differences between north and south, in that case western Europe and Latin America. Since the approach I am taking is the postcolonial feminism, picking a former Spanish colony can bring rich insights to the research. Considering that the action of the Spanish Kingdom in Latin America developed for almost four centuries, it is interesting to study whether the power relations that were set then are still somehow present, or they fully vanished overtime. Latin America as a region is too vast to be taken as the main object of study, which is the reason why, even if I do touch upon it in the analysis, the case of Colombia will be the focus. Studying a single country can bring to light some aspects than can be useful to understand the dynamics between the EU and the South American region as a whole.
The Latin American region is known as the area comprising the Central and South American territory. From a historical perspective, it is relevant to highlight the role of European colonizers in the region back in the 15th century, bringing tensions that lasted until the 19th century. Quijano points at two main changes that the colonization of the Americas brought: the exploitation in all forms of labor, marked by slavery as a new way of setting power hierarchies, and the creation of a new mental category that would differentiate the conquering and the conquered, the dominant and the dominated, superior and inferior. This distinction would be determined by the establishment of the idea of “race”, that would distinguish the identities of those coming from Europe and those “found” in the Central and South American land (Quijano, 2000:216), which can be linked with the construction of the “other”. Even if the colonial past of Europe was left behind centuries ago, it seems relevant for this research to acknowledge the inflections of colonialism and the potential reminiscences of it in the current Normative Power that the EU promotes in the 21st century (Onar and Nicolaïdis, 2013).
The interest in choosing Colombia amongst the 20 countries forming the Latin American region is due to the specific situation of gender inequalities in the context and the recent events that took place in the country, which add relevance to the study. According to the Global Gender Gap Index, a tool introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 to measure the magnitude of gender-based disparities in the world, Colombia deserves some attention due to the considerable inequalities they still face in that regard. The index is based in four main fields of assessment, such as “the economic participation and
29 opportunity, education attainment, health and survival and political empowerment” (World Economic Forum, 2017:2). Amongst the 144 countries studied in 2017, Colombia occupies the 36th position (ibid). The challenges that the country faces when it concerns gender inequality range from the fight against Femicide1, which took the life of 145 women in Colombia, to the lack of an intersectional perspective in the gender plans or the inequalities in the work place or job opportunities, which again increase when race and ethnic intersections converge (CEPAL, 2018).
Colombia will be identified as the “other”, embodied by some organizations working on gender issues in Colombia, fighting for human rights and equality in specific social and political contexts, especially when it comes to gender. This research will not be built around a particular event but around political practices or concepts, such as the discrimination based on gender, race, class or sexual orientation.
For the selection of organizations, I have considered an intersectional approach, by picking those that work with women’s rights but also consider other forms of oppression that people in non-privileged social positions suffer, especially when intersecting with gender discrimination. In the case of Colombia, they are mainly indigenous communities (representing 3,4% of the country’s population) (Iwgia, 2019), afro-descendants (being the 10,6% of the population) (Rastogi, 2011), LGBT collectives, migrants and refugees (especially fleeing from Venezuela and currently representing over one million) (UNHCR, 2018) or victims of the conflict between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the government.
4.1.2 Time frame and selection of events
For the purposes of this thesis, the time frame will be delimited by a concrete period, such as the post-conflict situation in Colombia, contemporary in the time of study. Since I am not interested in how discourses developed over time but more on how the current situation is presented, I will analyze the gender approach in the region in the presented context and time.
In Colombia, the time frame is delimited by the start of the Colombian Peace Process in October 2016, ending a 53-year conflict in the region between the leftist guerrilla FARC and the Colombian Government. This peace agreement represents the first one in the
1Term defined by Diana E.H. Russell in 1976 to refer to a sex-based hate crime or "the killing of females by males
30 world that has included a gender perspective, responding to the UNSCR 1325 framework (WILPF, 2018), which is the reason why it becomes especially relevant and interesting to analyze the role of the EU in this context. The peace agreement can be considered the particular moment when the analysis starts, which can be understood as a particular foreign policy event (Hansen, 2006) since the role of international actors on it has been relevant in achieving the peace. The international community has acted as “facilitator and guarantor for peace talks” (Kumar, 2016), mainly because there were no opponents in the international scenario, but only third countries contributing to the peace talks, especially Cuba, Norway and Venezuela (Kumar, 2016).
4.1.3 Selection of the material
The majority of the texts are taken from the time under study. An analysis of the discourse currently employed by the EU will be carried out in order to understand how they construct their identity and communicate it in the rest of the world. Aiming to deepen into how the European Union is perceived in the countries where it operates, in this case, Latin America, I aim to complement the discourse analysis of official documents with interviews, which will be conducted with local organizations working for gender equality in Colombia. Therefore, the texts I will analyze can be divided into two different categories, the ones produced by the EU/EEAS and the ones created by the organizations I spoke with, based in Colombia and working in the women’s rights and gender equality field.
Since one of the goals is to compare discourses, I will focus on key texts that identify the dominant or the marginal discourse (Hansen, 2006). These will be working documents, official publications and speeches given, as well as interviews that will be carried out with key employees in the organizations under study. In order to contrast how the EU and the local approaches may resemble or differ, it seems appropriate to first take a glance at EU general approaches to gender in external policy to later focus on regional programmes concerning the chosen area and country.
EU documents
Concerning the selection of the texts to analyze, I will consider the requirements that Hansen (2006) defines. She points out at three main characteristics that the selected contemporary texts should have in order to be relevant and valuable: 1) have a clear articulation of identities and policies, 2) be read or attended to by a large audience, 3)
