Obstacles to Gender Equality and Mainstreaming – a literature review (original) (raw)
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Introduction Gender mainstreaming is a contested concept and practice. It is the re-invention, restructuring, and re-branding of a key part of feminism in the contemporary era. It is both a new form of gendered political and policy practice and it is a new gendered strategy for theory development. As a practice, gender mainstreaming is intended as a way of improving the effectivity of mainline policies by making visible the gendered nature of assumptions, processes and outcomes. As a form of theory, gender mainstreaming is a process of revision of key concepts in order to grasp more adequately a world that is gendered, rather than the establishment of a separatist gender theory. Gender mainstreaming encapsulates many of the tensions and dilemmas in feminist theory and practice over the last decade and provides a new focus for debates on how to move them on (Beveridge,). There has been a significant two-way traffic between feminist theories of gender relations and gender equality practitioners from which both have benefited. This paper explores the potential and limitations of gender mainstreaming as a practical and as an analytic strategy by addressing key underlying theoretical issues as well as comparatively assessing the implications of gender mainstreaming in different settings.
An Integrated Approach to Gender Equality: From Gender-Based Analysis to Gender Mainstreaming
Gender mainstreaming, a gender equality governance strategy, is performing poorly across governments. While many national and regional governments have adopted gender equality policy tools, developing and implementing an integrated gender mainstreaming strategy requires substantive reforms to existing procedures and institutional structures. The success or failure of policy reform is often attributable to the poor integration of new policy interventions into existing policy regime. Where instrument mixes are poorly coordinated ambiguity over policy goals can lead to confusion over program objectives and instrument application. Too often gender mainstreaming and gender-based analyses are used interchangeably which has significant implications for planning and implementation practices. This paper argues that the implementation of a new policy instrument is not isolated from the established policy regime and must contribute to the existing policy mix to perform optimally. Using Canada as a case study the gender equality policy instrument mix is examined to demonstrate how different abstractions of the problem result in sub-optimal performance.
ESCAPING THE MYTHICAL BEAST: GENDER MAINSTREAMING RECONCEPTUALISED
Journal of International Development, 2014
Since the early 2000s, disappointment has grown about the realization of the transformative potential that was ascribed to gender mainstreaming at its launch at the Beijing conference in 1995. The critiques on gender mainstreaming tend to represent gender mainstreaming as a 'mythical beast', and as such take for granted the social change it is intended to produce. This special issue seeks to look both beyond and inside the mythical beast. By approaching policy making as a social practice embedded in discursive politics, we seek to advance the theoretical underpinnings of gender mainstreaming and argue for a rethinking of agency and transformation.
Gender Mainstreaming Critiques: Signposts or Dead Ends?
2016
An enduring legacy of the Beijing conference, gender mainstreaming has been widely implemented and widely critiqued since the 1990s. But the basis of these critiques has changed over time: this article charts a typology of critique approaches. It shows how the central problem is diagnosed variously as the loss of the political dimensions of gender in the course of mainstreaming; or technical shortcomings; or the gendered nature of organisations as the causes of technical failure. For others, the problem has been the failure to scrutinise the connection between gender mainstreaming and changes in gender relations in women’s real lives. More recently, another group asserts that the trajectory of gender mainstreaming is simply part of the much broader logic of neoliberal governance. Understanding the technologies of power that shape a feminist practice suitable for the governance institutions into which it is inserted can help guide future feminist engagement. 1 Introduction – the gend...
GENDER EQUALITY POLICY OR GENDER MAINSTREAMING
Policy Studies, 2006
1 This paper has been written within the framework of our participation in the MAGEEQ project. We would like to thank Mieke Verloo and the MAGEEQ research team for generating such a nice and intellectually challenging environment in the project, which provided us with the incentive to write this paper and also with ideas for many of the points we developed here. We would also like to thank Bernadett Koles and Reka Safrany for their work in the Hungarian team of the MAGEEQ project. 2