ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the administration of European Union (EU) science and research policy in terms of the actions involved. It focuses on a distinction between three phases or stages of policy stabilisation: strategic policy formation; policy interpretation; and policy implementation. The chapter discusses how the understanding of research and science as a policy issue, which was dominant in Directorate General for Research (DG Research) prior to the adoption of gender mainstreaming (GM), excluded explicit discussion of any gender (in)equality problems. It reviews the insights supplied by the main approach, arguing that the policy-making processes constitute the ways of knowing that are available to DG Research staff during their work. These ways of knowing systematically highlight or minimise particular interests in science and research policy. In this case these processes recursively excluded the consideration of gender inequality, stabilising and reinforcing its non-perception prior to the main Framework Programme.
