Gendering European Economic Narratives: Assessing the Costs of the Crisis to Gender Equality

Austerity has become the defining feature of EU politics over the last ten years. The language of exceptionalism associated with the ‘the great recession’ (Keeley and Love 2010) has proved to be fertile ground for ideologically driven restructuring. Concerns about sovereign debt and its impact of the stability of the Eurozone led to the establishment of strict fiscal mechanisms aimed at ensuring member states’ compliance and have led to the most systematic challenge to the European social model to date