Introduction

This introduction provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines gender mainstreaming (GM) implementation in the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU). Feminist activists have successfully managed to promote GM as the best practice gender equality policy all over the world, seeing it adopted in over 100 states and multiple supra-national organisations. The GM policy is a demand aimed at policy makers to do two things: firstly, to act upon these feminist understandings of gender as a socially constructed, ever present structural phenomenon; and secondly to analyse and revise policy accordingly. Gender knowledge contestation (GKC) analysis examines the movement of feminist ideas and prescriptions for action from the activist realm, into rhetorical policy, and then implementation within a mainstream organisation.