Eurobarometer surveys and public opinion in the governance of the EU gender equality policy

Jacquot, Sophie;Belot, Céline
(2020) 27th International Conference of Europeanists (CES) — Location: Reykjavik (22.June.2020)

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Since 1975 more than 20 opinion surveys on gender equality related issues have been commissioned by the European institutions. Most of them interviewed over 1000 persons per country and up to more than 40,000 people. Strikingly, these surveys, the Eurobarometers (EBs), have never really been taken into account when observing European gender equality policy. Considering EBs as a fully-fledged instrument of public action, the purpose of this proposal is to fill this gap by re-questioning gender equality policy through the analysis of this instrument. This paper argues that these surveys bring new data which allow to re-analyse the history of the gender equality policy, especially with regard to the kind of public opinion which is of interest to policy-makers and how they use the results of these polls. We show that EBs and the appeal to the “voice of the citizens” have always had a legitimizing function for gender equality, but also that the purposes of this legitimization have changed over time. EBs were at first considered by European authorities as a useful instrument when trying to strengthen their institutional positions and to widen their field of action. They appear today as playing a role at each step of policy-making, from policy framing and agenda-setting to evaluation. In a context of low support of citizens for the EU political system, EBs have been integrated in the day-to-day routine of gender equality policy-making, but they are also used by the European Parliament to reassert the shared values of the EU.
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Jacquot, S., & Belot, C. (2020). Eurobarometer surveys and public opinion in the governance of the EU gender equality policy. 27th International Conference of Europeanists (CES), Reykjavik. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/170315