Exploring the influence of digital feminist activism on the European Union discourses about women: the case of the #MeToo.

This paper explores the European Union's discourse in response to the #MeToo movement. To this aim, a qualitative exploratory study with a critical discourse analysis was conducted after in-depth reading and manual coding of European Union preparatory legislative documents explicitly mentioning the movement. In addition, a sample of these documents was compared to similar papers before the movement to investigate whether it has influenced the formal discourse of the Union on gender-based violence and women rights. According to the results, the #MeToo movement has been used to go further and quicker on previous initiative already ongoing to fight against gender-based violence such as the Member States ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Even though prevention is at the heart of the European Union discourse in every document, it seems that after the #MeToo movement, there is a partial shift from exclusive prevention to more condemnation. However, the word perpetrator is almost...Show moreThis paper explores the European Union's discourse in response to the #MeToo movement. To this aim, a qualitative exploratory study with a critical discourse analysis was conducted after in-depth reading and manual coding of European Union preparatory legislative documents explicitly mentioning the movement. In addition, a sample of these documents was compared to similar papers before the movement to investigate whether it has influenced the formal discourse of the Union on gender-based violence and women rights. According to the results, the #MeToo movement has been used to go further and quicker on previous initiative already ongoing to fight against gender-based violence such as the Member States ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Even though prevention is at the heart of the European Union discourse in every document, it seems that after the #MeToo movement, there is a partial shift from exclusive prevention to more condemnation. However, the word perpetrator is almost absent compared to victim in all the documents analysed, even more in the ones mentioning the movement. Thus, we know what the European Union is urgently condemning but we do not know who. Moreover, progressive feminist discourses such as the rejection of patriarchal social order seem to have overtaken the arena of the European Parliament. Still, most of the perspective taken in the discourses and initiatives listed are symptomatologic treatment of the problem. Finally, the European Commission's texts differ from those of the European Parliament because of a significant economic cost-benefit approach to gender equality. This perspective could be described as a neoliberal discourse using feminist values of egalitarianism and empowerment for non-feminist purposes. This raises the question of gender equality for whom and especially for what?Show less

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Exploring the influence of digital feminist activism on the European Union discourses about women: the case of the #MeToo.