Feminist Framing of Europeanisation: Gender Equality Policies in Turkey and the EU

How can we rethink the theory and practice of Europeanisation from a feminist perspective? This event discusses the recently published edited collection ‘Feminist Framing of Europeanisation’ (with Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) which explores the Europeanisation of gender policies and addresses theoretical challenges surrounding the EU’s impact on domestic politics.

How can we rethink the theory and practice of Europeanisation from a feminist perspective? This event discusses the recently published edited collection ‘Feminist Framing of Europeanisation’ (with Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) which explores the Europeanisation of gender policies and addresses theoretical challenges surrounding the EU’s impact on domestic politics. Using Turkey as a case study, the authors draw on the key arguments of feminist philosophy on representation, difference and gender equality debates to offer a unique critique and conceptualization of the Europeanisation of gender policies in different areas such from education to asylum policies and seek response to the question of ‘Can the EU be a feminist actor?’ Thus, this book – and this event – discusses why Turkey and the EU need a feminist approach that draws on moral and feminist philosophy to design gender-equality policies that could lead to gender-just outcomes and challenges the rhetoric policies of the EU and Turkey that see women as pawns for their instrumental agendas driven by economic and security concerns.  

Chair:  Beste İşleyen, Department of Political Science, UvA

Discussant: Hanna L. Muehlenhoff, Department of European Studies, UvA

About the Speakers:

Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Bahçeşehir University, Turkey. She is also an associate member of the Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP). Her research focusses on Europeanisation, EU foreign policy, Turkish foreign policy, gendering EU studies, and gender and diplomacy. She is the author of Conditionality, the EU and Turkey: From Transformation to Retrenchment (2019). 

F. Melis Cin is a Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at Lancaster University, UK. She is a feminist researcher with a particular interest in exploring the relationship between education, peace and international development. She is the author of Gender Justice, Education and Equality: Creating Capabilities for Girls’ and Women’s Development (2017, Palgrave); the co-editor of Youth, Gender and the Capabilities Approach to Development (with A. Lopez-Fogues, 2018, Routledge) and Post-Conflict Participatory art: Socially Engaged Development (with F. Mkwanazi, 2021 Routledge).