Can Gender Equality Be Institutionalized?

Abstract

Institutional innovation can be understood as launching an institution within an intact institutional and cultural context. Such attempts of guided institutionalization pose a crucial built-in problem. The goal of institutional innovation is to create new routine-reproduced, taken-for-granted behaviour patterns. The means to reach this goal is rational, purposive action, which is the very opposite of routinized enacting. This immanent contradiction of institutional innovation is discussed on the basis of a comparative study on the introduction of gender quotas in Norwegian and German political parties. The analysis draws on more than 50 qualitative interviews with parliamentarians from both countries. The case of quota rules seems paradoxical because the procedure itself, which is introduced in order to make equal political participation of both genders taken for granted, explicitly stresses gender difference. However, quotas are highly institutionalized in Norwegian political life, while they are still contested in Germany. It is argued that an important reason for this is the different cultural contexts. In Norway, `feminism of difference' represents values with which the procedure of quota regulations can tie in. The German emphasis on `feminism of equality' poses a hindrance to the establishment of quotas. Cultural launching values, which can function as structural carriers of behaviour patterns into acceptance and taken-for-grantedness, are identified as a crucial factor for institutional innovation.