Global Governance as Neo-liberal Governmentality: Gender Mainstreaming in the European Employment Strategy

Abstract

Global governance encompasses political projects that set out to extend or deepen political cooperation between state and non-state actors on multiple levels: international, national, regional and local (see Rai, this book). In addition to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the UN, nation states or regional supranational institutions such as the European Union play a major decision-making role in this process. The influence of civil society and global social movements has also increased substantially in debates on international policies such as GATTs (Meyer and Prügl 1999; O’Brien et al. 2000). Women’s movements or organizations have been present in this process and have achieved changes for women’s rights in some cases, such as implementing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) within the United Nations, and have even gained institutional access in leading international organizations such as the World Bank. Although progress has been made in advancing equality for some women globally and placing gender issues onto the political agenda through gender mainstreaming within all policies of the European Union, the effectiveness of these policies is still debatable.