A feminist decolonial challenge to European Union’s gender governance : knowledge hierarchies and exclusion in the European Parliament

Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm, Rahime and Cin, Melis and Anagnostakis, Dimitrios (2026) A feminist decolonial challenge to European Union’s gender governance : knowledge hierarchies and exclusion in the European Parliament. Journal of Gender Studies. ISSN 0958-9236

Abstract

This paper critically examines the European Union’s (EU) gender equality policies through a decolonial feminist lens, focusing on how epistemic hierarchies are reproduced within the gender equality discourse of the European Parliament (EP), which presents itself as a progressive actor and moral authority on gender equality. Drawing on existing critiques of the EU’s instrumental and neoliberal approaches to gender, the paper analyses 42 texts adopted by the EP during its 9th parliamentary term (2019–2024). The analysis identifies three recurring patterns: the instrumentalisation of gender equality, the monopolization of feminist knowledge, and the managerialisation of equality through technocratic procedures. Drawing on the concepts of epistemic resistance, decolonial praxis, and epistemic accountability, the article examines where dominant gender-equality framings are momentarily disrupted, transformative engagement with marginalized knowledges is foreclosed, and responsibility for structural inequalities is displaced or depoliticized. While recognizing the EU’s historical gender equality achievements, the article argues that persistent epistemic hierarchies limit transformative change and carry political risks. It concludes by calling for a decolonial feminist reorientation grounded in pluralized knowledge production, relational accountability, and reciprocal engagement as conditions for genuinely transformative gender governance.