ABSTRACT
“[A]lmost any Europeanist with a minimal level of self-respect flags herself [sic!] as an ‘institutionalist’ at the moment” Aspinwall and Schneider (2000, 3) claim. One can only assume that the authors believed that by adopting the female pronoun to describe “Europeanists,” they were being inclusive and gender-aware. In fact, gender awareness, institutionalist approaches and EU studies have seldom crossed. While many (predominantly male) researchers apply new institutionalist approaches to European Union (EU) studies, until very recently, few do so with a gender lens. However, through the “feminist institutionalist” project of the past two decades, nuanced variations of new institutionalist approaches have emerged to offer gendered insights into the study of European institutions.
