How can the concept of gender knowledge explain the gendered nature of the European Recovery Fund “NextGenerationEU”?

The Covid-19-pandemic reproduced many long-existing gender inequalities and created new ones: women are over-represented in underpaid sectors such as the health care sector and were faced with the double burden of paid and reproductive work in the household, when kindergartens closed. As an answer to the global pandemic, the European Union (EU) implemented a recovery package, the #NextGenerationEU (NGEU) Fund. However, this fund reproduces existing gender inequalities, as most of the money is directed to male-dominated sectors whereas the care-sector, where many women work, is left out. To explain this phenomenon, the concept of gender knowledge by the sociologist Andresen and Dölling will be applied to show that the underlying assumptions of gender and its connection to economic topics can be regarded as the root for these unequal policies. By referring to the analyses of the European Semester by Cavaghan and O’Dwyer (2018), the most crucial economic governance regime, and on the analysis of the European Parliament by Elomäki (2021), it can be shown that the EU institutions focus on the productive factor paradigm, leaving out the reproductive sector. This neoliberal perspective on gender equality can also be seen in the NGEU Fund. To embed a more critical gender perspective into the EU, a critical gender definition has to be introduced in the process of the European Semester. Moreover, depending on the political group dominating in the European Parliament, this institution can also be a pivotal actor in integrating a more critical gender perspective.