This article explores the link between gender representation and climate policy-making in Scandinavia. We ask to what extent equal descriptive representation (critical mass) results in substantive representation (critical acts). Our study shows that women and men are equally represented in administrative and political units involved in climate policymaking, and in some units women are in the majority. However, a text analysis of the outcomes, that is, the Scandinavian climate strategies, reveals a silence regarding gender, further confirmed through interviews. Accordingly, a critical mass of women does not automatically result in gender-sensitive climate policy-making, recognizing established gender differences in material conditions and in attitudes toward climate issues. In interviews, we also note that policy-makers are largely unaware of gender differences on climate issues in the Scandinavian context. We discuss why a critical mass of women in climate policy-making has not led to critical acts and offer alternative explanations informed by feminist IR theory. For example, poststructural feminism claims that masculine norms are deeply institutionalized in climate institutions; hence, policy-makers adapt their actions to the masculinized institutional environment. Thus, substantive representation should be understood in relation to gendered institutional processes.--
Climate change has arrived centre-stage on the EU's policy agenda. The new President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced in 2019 that Europe would be the frst climate-neutral continent by 2050 and introduced the European Green Deal and the frst EU climate laws as part of the project to achieve this goal. Externally, the EU plays a major role in international climate negotiations, partly to meet its global leadership aspirations, and partly to ensure that European manufacturing is not undercut by producers with lower environmental standards. Climate change also features prominently in EU foreign policy, where it is framed as part of a series of nexuses, connecting it with migration, security and confict. The need to address climate change rests against a backdrop of crisis -economic, environmental, health and political -building a sense of urgency and strategic prioritisation. One of the consequences of this is the sidelining of gender equality, despite the EU's repeated assertions of its commitment to mainstreaming the goal of gender equality throughout all its internal and external activities.This chapter draws on feminist institutionalism and the literature on policy integration, including gender mainstreaming, to show how and why gender is excluded from EU external climate policy. It asks, frstly, where, in external climate policy, do we fnd references to gender and what, if anything, do they contribute to achieving gender-just climate policy. Secondly, it asks how feminist institutionalism and policy integration studies can help us understand why gender equality is not mainstreamed in EU external policy and what institutional obstacles prevent its integration. I argue that gender has been excluded from EU external climate policy by a combination of institutional power struggles; a discourse of crisis and security, which pushes gender into the background; and a proliferation of nexuses and mainstreaming imperatives in which the treaty obligation to mainstream gender is pushed to one side. EU climate policyEU climate policy has three main components: mitigation, adaptation and climate diplomacy. Mitigation refers to strategies for reducing climate change,
This paper examines whether particular subjective features are better suited than objective feature, to study the ability of the Nordic EU member states to have a say within the environmental policy of the EU. The Nordic states will be placed within a conceptual framework intended to explain states' ability to exercise influence internationally. The paper will argue that traditional quantitative measures normally defining size of states, such as the population, territorial size, GDP and military strength, do not give a clear picture of their influence within the EU. The paper argues that subjective features, which are concerned with how various domestic and external actors regard the Nordic states in environmental matters, have enabled the Nordic states to punch above their weight in EU environmental policy-making. Also, it is maintained here that features such as Nordic politicians' ambitions and prioritizations and their ideas about EU decision-making processes may indicate their states' ability to influence within the Union. Furthermore, we claim that states' administrative competence and the degree of domestic cohesion, combined with the degree to which the state maintains an external united front are important indicators of their success in the EU.
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