EU has been faced with a set of challenges. The greatest is the war in Ukraine which was caused by Putin's aggression, and which is intertwined with various problems regarding environmental deterioration, nuclear risk, refugees and migration, and a political economy that increases inequality and fuels militarism, etc.

Even though the EU's response to date has adopted a dichotomous approach and has been predominantly one-dimensional, i.e. military, the current complex situation nevertheless has the advantage of better showing the interrelationships between various dimensions of the problems (social, environmental, gender, etc.). Intersectionality might represent an opportunity to link all these different challenges, read them and try to solve them in an intersectional way (Crenshaw 1989; Spike Peterson 2007).

To what extent can intersectional feminism add value precisely in its ability to interweave multiple dimensions of weakness and thus multiple solutions from an integrated perspective? How does gender contribute? And how does an intersectional perspective help manage this difficult situation and overcome war?

In order to answer these questions, my paper will consist of two main parts. The first is a review of the literature of International Relations and EU foreign policy from an intersectional perspective during the last five years (Debusscher and Manners 2020; Stern and Towns, 2022). I take into account both theoretical and empirical contributions to the debate as well as a critical analysis of its limits (Haastrup 2017; Guerrina & Wright 2016; Smith and Stavrevska 2022).

The second part concerns a case study on women's associations for peace and security’s role in solving the Ukraine war. I will examine whether this unique case has represented an opportunity for a qualitative leap forward in the affirmation of an intersectional European foreign policy and its implications from a theoretical perspective with focus on human security (Kaldor 2006, 2023) and EU planetary politics (Mannerso 2002; 2023).

The objective of the paper is to explore how the challenges of caring for an ageing population has implications for conceptualising care and equality in the European Union. Care and equality are intrinsically linked as illustrated by the sophisticated array of European Union legal provisions adopted to enable working parents to reconcile paid work with childcare responsibilities. Yet these provisions, underpinned by concerns of equality between women and men, overlook the reality that caring is not exclusively an issue of workplace rights nor is it limited to young and healthy children. The sharp increase in the ageing population has triggered a necessary shift in European Union policy to expend the concept of care beyond childcare. The foundation for the development of equality and care in the European Union has largely been motivated by economic arguments. The challenges of caring for an ageing population requires the reconceptualization of care, equality and the connection between these concepts in European Union law.

The paper argues that the features, definition and scope of caring for an ageing population implies a reconsideration of the organisation and the people involved in Long Term Care. It explores the limits of the EU’s economically-motivated response to caring and equality. Against this backdrop, the paper argues that the EU has the legal tools to reconceptualise care and equality beyond a predominately economic lens. The European Union’s values in the Treaty on the European Union and the aims contained in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (as well as the Charter of Fundamental Rights) have a strong potential to provide a moral as well as a legal basis for the EU’s engagement with Long Term Care for older people and more generally care and equality. The paper engages with three concepts that have particularly strong potential to underpin the development of policy related to care and equality: human dignity, solidarity and wellbeing.

A possible voluntary service for women in the Bundeswehr has long been the subject of controversy. When the legal framework was created in 2001 and it became possible for women to join the service, the number of women in the service increased considerably. Did this put an end once and for all to the discussion about the role of women in the state as an entity to be defended? More importantly, did this step moved forward a step to an equal society? Or, with the integration of women into the armed forces, was the "passive" role of women broken once and for all? Until 1973, women were only allowed to serve in the Bundeswehr as "medics". Were the feminist voices that became louder and louder in the 1990s, and which also made themselves heard in the form of institutionalization of gender studies, successful in their quest for broad social change? Or were there other reasons for this? This thesis deals with the question of whether the role of women in the nation has fundamentally changed, how the framework conditions for women in the Bundeswehr have changed, and which measures contributed to the fact that the Federal Republic of Germany was ready to take the step of a voluntary armed service of women in 2001. In doing so, it will also address the question of whether feminist currents are fundamentally compatible with national aspirations and, if so, how they may have permanently altered the social norms of the German nation.