4. The Politics of In/Exclusion in the EU: Gender and LGBT+

This chapter examines in detail social inclusion issues of gender and sexual minorities in Europe, focusing on the state of women’s and LGBT+ equality claims and policies in the EU. The increasing diversity within European states, as well as fragility of liberal democratic governance and the emergence of populist right-wing politics elicit contestations of gender and sexuality equality claims. At the same time, the EU institutions provide their own complementary equality policies, though with somewhat limited impact. As a result, ongoing socio-political and demographic inclusion challenges have not been addressed sufficiently on domestic and EU levels. This despite the fact that women’s movements have been active for decades now and the EU advocates the mainstreaming of gender into all policies. Yet the lack of gender equality becomes evident in gender violence, the construction of gender as ‘ideology’, and the lack of feminist representation and equality, for example. Similarly, LGBT+ rights still vary substantially across Europe, though they have received outsize visibility as a new ground for contesting Europe’s liberalism by more conservative factions. Thus the salience of sexual orientation and gender identity issues evidence the increase in actor-driven identity politics, but also shows that societal inclusion is accompanied by exclusion.