Is Gender Mainstreamed? : A study of the European Commission's use of gender mainstreaming in development policies

The EU has long expressed a will to be a normative power and to externally promote the values it views as important. Seeing as the EU collectively is the largest donor of foreign aid in the world, development policies are a perfect platform for doing this. One value that has gained ground in recent years is the notion of gender equality. Bearing this in mind, this thesis explores how the EU’s largest institutional donor of foreign aid, the European Commission, has chosen to promote the value of gender equality in development policies. More precisely, by focusing on the concept of gender mainstreaming, it considers both a quantitative and qualitative method to answer the question: How has gender mainstreaming been used over time by the Commission in development policies? The study uses theories on gender, women and development and relies on policy documents from the years 1995, 2007 and 2015. The results show that gender mainstreaming has increased over the years. At the same time, today’s use of gender mainstreaming is found to circle around a discussion on whether gender equality should be promoted as something society gains from, through its contribution to economical gains, or whether it should be promoted solely on the basis of it being a right