(Un)Committed to Gender Equality? An overview of strategic governmental planning in Romania.

Even though under continuous attacks, gender equality is now assumed as a core value of the European Union (art. 2 and 3.2 of TEU). Different norms were used overtime to promote gender equality in the EU, some of them being directly enforceable (hard), others though also normative, adopted rather soft, as recommendations. At the same time, also due this soft-to-hard playing game, member states are moving with different speeds towards their aim of gender equality.  In the context of a more and more required (hard) gender mainstreaming approach in public policies (see the Inter-institutional agreement on the Multiannual Financial Framework, Recovery and Resilience Regulation 2021/241), the main research question I will try to give a possible answer in this paper is: how is Romania performing in integrating the gender equality perspective and addressing gender inequalities in its actual strategic governmental planning? I operationalize strategic governmental planning for gender equality on the one side as gender mainstreaming (integrating gender in all levels of strategic planning) and on the other hand as specific measures in specific areas. The methodology used is policy document analysis, based on specific questions related to the integration of gender (as a value, as a principle, in diagnosis or prognosis, with or without gender statistics etc. ), and also to the voices and roles of women and men, if present. Finally, the intersectional perspective will be similarly questioned in the analysis.