Gender and European Integration

The paper assesses the contribution of gender approaches to understanding Europeanintegration. It offers a conceptualization of such approaches as including a distinctontology, epistemology and methodology. While feminist literature on the EuropeanUnion is diverse, all such literature sheds light on the gendered process of Europeanintegration. The authors identify two distinct contributions of this literature: (a) itillustrates the relevance of movement actors and other advocates in shaping EU policies;(b) it shows that economic integration entails the creation of new gender regimes. Thepaper illustrates these contentions presenting case studies of the EU’s response to sextrafficking, the reform of the common agricultural policy, and of enlargement.

Incidence of new onset glomerulonephritis after SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination is not increased

Numerous cases of glomerulonephritis manifesting shortly after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination have been reported, but causality remains unproven. Here, we studied the association between mRNA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and new-onset glomerulonephritis using a nationwide retrospective cohort and a case-cohort design. Data from all Swiss pathology institutes processing native kidney biopsies served to calculate incidence of IgA nephropathy, pauci-immune necrotizing glomerulonephritis, minimal change disease, and membranous nephropathy in the adult Swiss population. The observed incidence during the vaccination campaign (January to August 2021) was not different from the expected incidence calculated using a Bayesian model based on the years 2015 to 2019 (incidence rate ratio 0.86, 95% credible interval 0.73-1.02) and did not cross the upper boundary of the 95% credible interval for any month. Among 111 patients 18 years and older with newly diagnosed glomerulonephritis between January and August 2021, 38.7% had received at least one vaccine dose before biopsy, compared to 39.5% of the general Swiss population matched for age and calendar-time. The estimated risk ratio for the development of new-onset biopsy-proven glomerulonephritis was not significant at 0.97 (95% confidence interval 0.66-1.42) in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated individuals. Patients with glomerulonephritis manifesting within four weeks after vaccination did not differ clinically from those manifesting temporally unrelated to vaccination. Thus, vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 was not associated with new-onset glomerulonephritis in these two complementary studies with most temporal associations between SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and glomerulonephritis likely coincidental

Transnational Activism in the UN and the EU A Comparative Study

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10. Gender and European Integration

This chapter examines gender approaches to the study of European integration and their ontological claim that gender matters when probing the process of European integration. European integration is part of a sociopolitical world that is fundamentally structured by understandings of femininity and masculinity and contributes to reconstructing these understandings. Proponents of gender approaches argue that one can only fully understand and explain large parts of the European integration process with the help of a gender-sensitive perspective. The chapter first considers feminist explanations of gender equality policies at the European Union level before illustrating the contribution that gender and feminist analysis can make by presenting empirical case studies on trafficking in women and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It also discusses EU enlargement from the perspective of gender politics, emphasizing the EU’s validation of hegemonic masculinity in the process of enlargement.</p