Security and defence policy

Scholars and practitioners alike have considered EU security and defence policy to be weak and underdeveloped. The EU is rather perceived as a normative than a military power in international relations. However, it is especially against this background of the EU’s soft power and its treaty commitment to implementing and promoting gender equality that gender equality should be high on the EU’s agenda in security and defence. This chapter introduces the historical and contemporary development of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), outlining its trajectory from a neglected policy field to an increasingly important area for cooperation between EU member states. Second, the chapter discusses the still limited but growing feminist literature on CSDP, which on the hand shows the lack of powerful feminist actors within EU institutions pushing for the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in CSDP and on the other hand analyses the gendered discourses of CSDP that produce racialised masculinities and femininities. Last, the chapter argues that future research has to pay more attention to militarism within CSDP and related policy-fields as well as challenge dominant security understandings more radically by studying security from the ground-up.