ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the European union (EU) as a civil society promoter, and then asks how women’s movements and gender advocacy fit within the EU’s civil society framework. It addresses how transnational and national civil society articulations intersect in the EU. The chapter identifies gaps and future topics for researching gendered civil society. The Commission, in particular, has encouraged the formation of EU-level civil society networks since the mid-1990s. EU-level civil society in the gender arena displays a panoply of diverse issue-driven alliances and networks that range from education and welfare to science and development. Professionalization of civil society organizations (CSOs) did not just occur in Brussels, but also from national to local levels. Gender research, in particular, has articulated both the influence of national and subnational civil society networks on the EU level as well as the interaction between different levels of mobilizations.
