Joyce Mushaben: From Mutter der Kompanie to Madam Europe - Ursula von der Leyen and the Pursuit of Gender Equality
Tuesday, June 2, 202012-1:30 pm Eastern Time (US)
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About the Event
Having served in all four Merkel cabinets, Ursula von der Leyen often faced major opposition within her own party (CDU/CSU), due to her curiously strong stance on gender equality issues. Though she refuses to label herself a feminist, von der Leyen became the driving force behind many policies that have fundamentally transformed the German gender regime since 2005. Her tenure as the nation's first female defense minister was no less controversial than the nomination that rendered her the first woman President of the European Commission in July 2019. She immediately announced an ambitious agenda to level the playing field between women and men, before Europe was overtaken by the Corona-pandemic, which could pull the brake on her equality promises.
Presuming that past performance is the best predictor of future actions, this talk reviews von der Leyen’s extensive record on equality policies in Germany, then addresses the conundrum posed by the great expectations her appointment has raised at the EU level, where she faces many new structural limitations.
About the Speaker
Joyce Marie Mushaben (PRONOUNCE: MUS [like bus] – HAY [what horseseat]– BEN [big clock in London]) received her Ph. D. from Indiana University in 1981. Having recently retired as a Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, she formerly served as Director of the Institute for Women's & Gender Studies (2002-2005). She is now an Affiliated Faculty member in the BMW Center for German & European Studies at Georgetown University and works with Gender5 Plus, an EU feminist think-tank.
Having spent over 18 years living/researching in Germany, her early work focused on new social movements (peace, ecology, feminism, anti-nuclear protests and neo-Nazi activism), German national identity and generational change. She then moved on to European Union developments, citizenship and migration policies, women’s leadership, Euro-Islam debates and comparative welfare state reforms.
Her books and monographs include
1) From Post-War to Post-Wall Generations: Changing Attitudes towards the National Question and NATO in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949-1995;
2) Identity without a Hinterland? Continuity and Change in National Consciousness in the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1989;
3) The Changing Faces of Citizenship: Integration and Mobilization among Ethnic Minorities in Germany;
4) Gendering the European Union: New Responses to Old Democratic Deficits (with Gabriele Abels);
5) Becoming Madam Chancellor: Angela Merkel and the Berlin Republic (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017)
Her articles have appeared in World Politics, Polity, West European Politics, German Politics, German Politics & Society, the Journal of Peace Research, Democratization, Citizenship Studies, Femina Politica and the Journal of Ethnicity & Migration Studies, inter alia. A former president of the German Politics Association, she has served on the Governing Board of the International Association for the Study of German Politics, and the German Studies Association, is an Editorial Board member for German Politics & Society, German Politics, Femina Politica and the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies.
Prof. Mushaben has secured numerous international grants, including fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Marshall Fund, the Fulbright Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She has served as a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences, at the GDR Academy for Social Sciences and the Central Institute for Youth Research (East Germany). In 1989/90 she served as a Ford Foundation Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary Studies, and in 1990-1991 became the first Research Fellow in the new Center for German & European Studies at Georgetown University.
She also taught as a Visiting Professor at the Ohio State University and Washington University, as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Erfurt, and a Visiting Professor at universities in Stuttgart, Frankfurt/Main, Tübingen and Berlin. She has guest lectured at more than 35 institutions of higher learning, including Harvard, Cornell, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Washington, Berlin’s Free University, the Humboldt University, the College of Europe, Science Po, and the London School of Economics.
Her honors include: the UM-St. Louis Trailblazer Award (1999) for advancing women's rights, the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research Creativity (2007) and the Missouri Governor’s Award for Teaching Excellence (2012). That year she also became only the fifth woman (among 40 men) in the College of Arts & Sciences to be designated a Curators’ Distinguished Research Professor. In 2016 she was named the College of Arts & Sciences first interdisciplinary Professor of Global Studies. She is commonly known as “Dr. J.”