"Girl power and gender mainstreaming. Looking for peace in new places through an EU lens"

Mushaben, Joyce Marie. (2003) "Girl power and gender mainstreaming. Looking for peace in new places through an EU lens" . In European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 2003 (8th), March 27-29, 2003, pages 23.

Abstract

This paper begins with a few reflections as to why most international peace-keeping missions have consistently failed since the miraculously peaceful fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, 1989/90. I briefly review the concept of gender mainstreaming, adopted by the EU in 1995, subsequent to EU women's participation in the 1995 UN Beijing Conference. Next I address presumed linkages between sustainable development and sustainable peace that have increasingly shaped both the UN and EU approaches to Third World countries over the last decade-not at all coincidentally, the very period during which women have assumed prominent positions at the international and supranational levels. I then examine the ways in which EU policy-makers have sought to concert gender, development and sustainable peace in accordance with 'Beijing plus 5" norms. Finally, I present a mini-case study of German efforts to operationalize these norms under a Red-Green government since 1998, driven by a critical mass of foreign ministers.