The gendered history of economic and monetary union

Abstract

While there is an impressive literature on gender and the past decade of economic crises faced by the EU, there is still a gap in our understanding of the gendered nature of the historical development of European Economic Policy. To what extent is the gendered nature of this policy area a continuation or a new phenomenon? This paper examines a key document in the establishment of the Economic and Monetary Union—the Delors Report. It draws on feminist political economy concepts of the strategic silence, the deflationary bias, and the measurement bias to illustrate the gendered underpinnings of this key document, and key moment. As a result, this paper offers a corrective to gender-blind histories of EMU, as well as providing a basis for a more historically informed feminist analysis of contemporary economic governance in the EU.