Feminist Institutionalism Research Articles

Creating gendered change in Irish higher education: is managerial leadership up to the task?

Using a Feminist Institutional perspective, this paper suggests that the explanation for the slow pace of change in the gender profile of the professoriate lies in the gender awareness of managerial leadership. In Irish universities, women now constitute 51 per cent of the lecturers, but only 24 per cent of those at full professorial level and have, on average, a three times lesser ‘chance’ than men of accessing a professorship [-The context is one where power is concentrated at (male) presidential level and where managerial leadership is seen as driving change. Using an ex-post facto research design, involving a re-analysis of qualitative interview data collected from those at presidential, vice-presidential and dean level 10 years ago, it differentiates between four categories of gender awareness: denial of the existence or relevance of gender (mainly men); stereotypical awareness of gender (mainly men); awareness of gender inequality (both men and women) and gender competence (both men and women). Only a minority were in the latter category, which is seen as most likely to be associated with change in the professorial gender profile. Finally, the question of whether the under-representation of women in the professoriate across the EU could be similarly explained is raised.

Women and Employment in Tunisia

Tunisia's legacy of “state feminism” and its strong civil society—including human rights, labor, and women's rights organizations—have placed Tunisian women in advance of their Arab sisters, and women are present across an array of professions and occupations. Still, most Tunisian women remain outside the labor force, face precarious forms of employment, or are unemployed. This article examines women's employment patterns, problems, and prospects in the light of an untoward economic environment, conservative social norms, and feminist advocacy. Drawing on interview and documentary data, and informed by feminist political economy and institutionalism, it highlights the importance of institutional supports for working mothers and improved work conditions to encourage more female economic participation and stronger labor-force attachment and thus to weaken patriarchal attitudes and values. The paper points to the need for both class-based and gender-based policies with respect to women's economic participation and rights.

Implementing Gender Mainstreaming in Swedish Model Municipalities

AbstractThis article analyzes the implementation of gender mainstreaming at the local level in Sweden by investigating implementation gaps in the operations of two municipalities, Eskilstuna and Jönköping. The study draws on the literature on policy implementation, particularly the dimensions of comprehension, capacity, and will, as well as the feminist institutional literature on resistance. The data are based on a micro-study of the implementation of gender mainstreaming in two model municipalities, comprising interviews with key actors and a document study. The study shows that the key obstacles to the implementation of gender mainstreaming are complacency—that is, the perception that work on gender mainstreaming is satisfactory and that no extra attention to the matter is needed—and the congestion of perspectives—the fact that the gender equality perspective must compete with other relevant perspectives, a process in which gender equality is often the loser. Another obstacle is lack of political will. However, lack of political will, even in model municipalities, may be compensated for by solid systems of governance. The study contributes to research on implementation theory and feminist institutionalism by demonstrating the gendered barriers and obstacles to affecting change, even in best-case scenarios.

“Organised Crime is a Feminist Issue!”: Patriarchy, Power and Resistance in a Mafia-Dominated City

In this inductive process study, we use a Foucauldian lens to shed light on the ways in which ‘patriarchy dismantling’, a form of oppressive work, is conducted in the mafia-dominated city of Catania (Sicily), vis-à-vis ‘patriarchy crafting’, a type of resistance work. Building on Foucault’s view of power as relational and diffused and his understanding of individuals as fragmented subjects, we illustrate how patriarchal domination is perpetuated through the social categorisation, manipulation and policing of the self. However, we suggest, patriarchal power has been challenged in Catania by reclaiming and adapting for an emancipatory use discursive tools previously utilised towards patriarchy reproduction, and by accordingly renegotiating novel forms of selfhood. While resistance work has its limitations and new technologies may undermine it by reproducing repressive gender constructs (Foucault, 1988), they can also be re-appropriated to create liberating meanings. Through our analysis, we contribute to topical organizational studies debates on matters of gender, power and institutional work, and advance a novel theoretical perspective, which we call feminist institutionalism (Mackay et al., 2010).

The Myth of Women’s Political Empowerment within Lebanon’s Sectarian Power-Sharing System

ABSTRACTThis article examines women’s political empowerment programs that focus on enabling women to run for office. Using the case of Lebanon, the article presents empirical insights highlighting a mismatch between what these programs offer and what women perceive to be the real challenges they face. The article makes a threefold contribution. First, it expands the critiques of women’s political empowerment to include programs focused on helping women run for elections; second, it aims at applying feminist institutionalism to ethno-nationalist power-sharing systems; and third, it highlights the intersection of formal and informal institutional challenges by bringing empirical insights from Lebanese women.

An Ideational Approach to Gendered Institutional Change: Revisiting the Institutionalization of a New Prostitution Regime in Sweden

ABSTRACTRecent work in the field of feminist institutionalism has made important progress in furthering our understanding of gendered institutional change. I argue that gradual ideational changes play an essential role in processes of gendered institutional change, and that examining the interaction between ideas and gendered institutions is of great importance for gaining a better understanding of processes of this type. This article revisits an empirical study of gendered institutional change in Swedish prostitution policy in the effort to specify two idea-based mechanisms that are conducive to gendered change, namely, consensus concerning the problem and gendering of the problem.

Institutions, Gendered Perceptions, and Frames of Meaning: Explaining Strategic Choices of Women MPs in Swedish Prostitution Policy

ABSTRACTPrevious research has shown that politics is a highly gendered field and that male and female decision-makers hold different values and engage with different issues as well. Feminist institutionalism has provided important insights concerning how a given context creates the conditions for political behavior and outcomes in respect to gender. While both formal and informal institutions have been of interest in this field of research, less attention has been directed to the perceptions actors have of the institutional context. The starting point of this article is the constructivist notion that actors’ behavior is mediated by their perceptions of the context, and it proposes that frame of meaning can be fruitfully used as an analytical concept for capturing gendered perceptions. The aim of the article is twofold. The first is to develop the notion of gendered frame of meaning as an analytical concept. The second is to investigate the strategies used by female MPs in the case of Swedish prostitution policy in order to show how gendered frames of meaning guided their strategic choices. The added value of this approach is that it furthers our understanding of how the institutional context influences actors’ behavior on the micro-level.

Feminist Institutional Activists: Venue Shifting, Strategic Adaptation, and Winning the Pregnancy Discrimination Act

We examine efforts of feminist institutional activists in the 1960s and 1970s as they worked to gain U.S. federal policy to combat workplace pregnancy discrimination. The success of these activists in winning policy change provides a case that allows us to develop a theoretical understanding of how feminist institutional activists can succeed in winning policy change. We find that when institutional activists strategically shifted governmental arenas and adapted their mobilization and discursive strategies to these arenas, they were able to dismantle policy‐specific barriers that impeded their goals. In taking these steps, feminist institutional activists were successful in opening up both contingent and structural opportunities, which ultimately allowed them to gain the policy change they sought.

Gender and innovation policy in Canada and Sweden

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a comparative case study of national innovation system in Canada and Sweden from the perspective of gender equality. The case study focuses on public policy to illuminate the formal aspects of innovation systems as they are conceived by the state in relation to gender, diversity and social inclusion. Formal policy measures are contrasted with interview data to provide a holistic picture of innovation policy as it relates to gender equality in both countries.Design/methodology/approachThis paper relies on data from 44 qualitative interviews with innovation leaders in the public sector, private sector and academia in Canada and Sweden, as well as a sample of innovation and gender experts at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in Paris, France, between 2012 and 2014. The theoretical framework draws on feminist institutionalism to explain the gendered interactions of institutions in innovation spaces.FindingsThis study finds that Sweden is a global policy leader in the development of gender-conscious innovation policy, while Canada has yet to consider a gender-conscious approach to innovation policy. Gender-conscious innovation policy norms have not traveled across the OECD because of administrative solos and political opportunity structures.Research/limitations implicationsEach of the people contacted to sit for an interview was chosen primarily on their professional title and their ability to speak from a place of knowledge about innovation in their country and or industry, and this creates a success bias within the study focusing on the knowledge of elites in the field.Practical implicationsThis study explores how policy might be reimagined to support gender equality and diversity, thus changing the institutional landscape to support a wider range of innovations and distributing the benefits of innovation in a more equitable way.Social implicationsThis paper challenges assumptions about the social and economic power dynamics reflected in current innovation systems in Canada and Sweden.Originality/valueThis is the first study of its kind in comparative public policy to explore differences in gender equality and innovation policy in Canada and Sweden. This research also contributes more widely to the existing body of gender, public policy and innovation literatures in Canada and Sweden, respectively.

Explaining variation in the implementation of global norms: Gender mainstreaming of security in the OSCE and the EU

Why do regional security organizations choose different approaches to implementing global gender norms? To address this question, we examine how the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU) integrated requirements derived from UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) on women, peace and security into their security policies. We identify differences in scope and dynamics between the change processes in the two organizations. The OSCE simply adapted its existing gender policy and has not changed it since, whereas the EU introduced a new, more extensive and specific policy, which it has already amended several times. Drawing on historical institutionalism and feminist institutionalism, we found that, first, reform coalitions prepared the ground for gender mainstreaming in the organizations’ respective security policies; and that, second, embedded policy structures, including rules and norms about external interaction as well as existing policy legacies, were responsible for the different approaches of the EU and OSCE with respect to UNSCR 1325.

Gender Differences in Local Executives: Public Policy and Intergovernmental Transfers in a Brazilian state = Diferencias de género en los ejecutivos locales: políticas públicas y transferencias intergubernamentales en un estado brasileño

Abstract. Feminist theory has offered new institutionalism key contributions as to how gender relates to public policy. Feminist institutionalism has researched the many ways wel­fare policies have impacted women and the many ways women, as elected officials, have im­pacted those policies in turn. As substantive representation research turns its eye towards legislative representatives, women in executive offices and their actions have been overlooked. As studies show, there are certain policy areas that face gender stereotypes: education, health, arts, family protection, and other welfare areas. Brazilian federalism and its execution of welfare policies is quite specific in its institutional design. Since the end of the last dictator­ship, there have been efforts towards decentralisation. States have more control over their spending; however, municipalities face stricter rules regarding taxation and how to spend it. Municipalities are in charge of executing most of Brazilian public policy, but have little control in designing them. What they are allowed to design tends to be induced through programmes and resources. Those resources for the execution of programmes come from several kinds of transfers, from federal and state governments. In the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, the Robin Hood Law states that municipalities that create institutions and/or policies in certain welfare areas will have access to slightly more resources. Research has shown that municipalities do invest in bettering themselves in this institu­tionalisation process, despite the small amount of funds that come with them. Therefore, our research asks: are female mayors more efficient in accessing specific resources from govern­ment transfers? Using regression analysis and other statistical tools, we hope to able to dem­onstrate how gender might play a role in the division of those funds. Keywords: public policy, federalism, Brazil, women mayors, gender, institutionalism. Resumen. La teoría feminista ha ofrecido contribuciones claves al nuevo institucion­alismo sobre cómo el género se relaciona con las políticas públicas. El institucionalismo femi­nista ha investigado las muchas formas en que las políticas de bienestar han impactado en las mujeres y las muchas formas en que las mujeres, como personas electas, han impactado esas políticas, a su vez. A medida que la investigación sustantiva de la representación vuelve su mi­rada hacia los representantes legislativos, las mujeres en las oficinas ejecutivas y sus acciones han sido mayoritariamente ignoradas. Como los estudios demuestran, existen ciertas áreas de la política que sufren con estereotipos de género: educación, salud, las artes, seguridad familiar y otras áreas de bienestar. El federalismo brasileño y su aplicación de las políticas de bienestar son específicas en su diseño institucional. Desde la última dicta­dura, se ha hablado de descentralización. Los estados tienen más control sobre sus gastos; sin embargo, las municipalidades están sujetas a reglas estrictas sobre cómo cobrar y usar impuestos. Los municipios están a cargo de ejecutar la mayor parte de la política pública brasileña, pero tienen poco control al diseñarlos. Lo que se les permite diseñar tiende a ser inducido a través de programas y recursos. Esos recursos para la ejecución de programas provienen de varios tipos de transferencias, de gobiernos federales y estatales. En el estado de Minas Gerais, en Brasil, la Ley Robin Hood establece que los municipios que crean instituciones y/o políticas en ciertas áreas de bienestar tendrán acceso a un poco más de recursos. Investigaciones han demostrado que los municipios sí invierten en mejorarse a sí mismos en este proceso de institucionalización, a pesar de la pequeña cantidad de fondos que vienen con ellos. Por lo tanto, nuestra investigación pregunta: ¿son las alcaldesas más eficientes en el acceso a recursos específicos de las transferencias del gobierno? Usando análisis de regresión y otras herramientas estadísticas, esperamos poder demostrar cómo el género podría desempeñar un papel en la división de esos fondos.Palabras clave: políticas públicas, federalismo, Brasil, alcaldesas, género, institucionalismo.

Gender, Power and Institutional Change – The Role of Formal and Informal Institutions in Promoting Women’s Political Representation in Ghana

The article explores the role of formal and informal institutions in influencing the representation of women in the two major political parties in Ghana – NDC (National Democratic Congress) and NPP (New Patriotic Party) – as well as the small party CPP (Convention People’s Party). Paradoxically, with its first president, Kwame Nkrumah (CPP), Ghana was one of the first countries in Africa to introduce a quota in 1959, reserving ten seats for women in Parliament. With a representation of 11% women after the election in 2012 and 13% after the election in 2016, however, Ghana has not been part of the positive development on the continent. Drawing on the body of literature on feminist institutionalism, the article explores the dynamics of power and change relating to the low representation of women in politics in Ghana. It further investigates responses to initiatives to promote more female candidates in Parliament – the reduction of filing fees and the introduction of women’s seats. The article argues that the formal institutions in the form of party structures work both as an obstacle and an opportunity to promote more women in politics, and that the informal structures in the form of the gender culture in Parliament and verbal abuse work against more women in politics.

The Women, Peace, and Security Agenda and Feminist Institutionalism: A Research Agenda

AbstractSince the inception of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) in 2000, feminist academia has been closely interested in the developing women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda in international affairs. The majority of this work has emerged from within feminist international relations (Mcleod 2015; Shepherd 2008) and feminist legal studies. Less attention has been paid to the WPS agenda by feminist political science. As a result, less consideration has been given to political institutions within the WPS framework.This paper argues that the design and implementation of postconflict political institutions is an important component of the WPS agenda and one which deserves greater attention. It demonstrates that using certain tenets of feminist political science, and feminist institutionalism in particular, can offer key insights into greater understanding of the importance of political institutions within postconflict societies.The article illustrates how political institutions have been underconsidered within academic work on the WPS agenda. It then argues that political institutions are an important part of the puzzle when it comes to implementing the WPS agenda. It shows how feminist institutional theory can help to provide key insights into the nature of postconflict institutions.

Making Institutions and Context Count: How Useful Is Feminist Institutionalism in Explaining Male Dominance in Politics?

While the same formal candidate selection rules are generally in place throughout a state, there is often intracountry variation in male descriptive overrepresentation. To explain this variation, scholars cannot focus exclusively on women (e.g., how do women respond to formal institutional opportunities?) or femininity (e.g., how do norms governing appropriate female behavior affect women's odds of being selected as a candidate?). Rather, scholars must attend to the ways that informal norms regarding masculinity operate across space and time within a country. Drawing on the insights of feminist institutionalism, this essay examines two intracountry sources of variation in candidate selection: the spatial urban-rural divide and temporal differences between first-time recruitment and renomination. While the formal candidate selection rules are uniform, informal institutions vary depending on where and when we look, leading to different levels of male overrepresentation.

Political Quota for Women and Gender-equitable Policies in Bangladesh

Ensuring women’s participation in the parliament has been an important part of the women’s movement around the world. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number 3 further highlighted the significance of quota for women in the parliament to increase their average proportion. However, it has been a long-standing debate whether political quota for women helps promote more gender-equitable policies. This article intends to explore this critical question by discussing the quota system in Bangladesh and the translation of gender-equitable policies as an outcome. It uses the feminist institutionalism framework to analyse the national level political and social institutions. The article also discusses why increasing women’s representation in the political arena alone (through quota system) does not automatically ensure gender-equitable policies; rather this transformation requires a combination of several policies.

Gender and the EU's Support for Security Sector Reform in Fragile Contexts

AbstractHow does the European Union (EU) include ‘gender’ within its support to security sector reform (SSR) programmes? The EU has committed to include gender perspectives by implementing the Women, Peace and Security agenda (WPS) within its foreign security practices. While researchers and practitioners recognise the importance of integrating gender issues into SSR operational effectiveness, there is limited knowledge about how this functions within the EU's security architecture. This article uses Feminist Institutionalism (FI) to understand the process of gender mainstreaming within the EU's support to SSR programmes. It does this by using two crucial theory‐testing cases of SSR programmes – Ukraine and Afghanistan. It finds that the EU's ability to promote gender inclusive approaches to SSR is limited by the structure of the EU's own assumptions and capabilities, and institutional constraints in third countries. At the same time, the cases underscore the importance of individuals as agents of change.

Gender mainstreaming and evaluation in the EU: comparative perspectives from feminist institutionalism

ABSTRACTThis article presents a focused comparative analysis of the institutionalization of two governance practices in the European Commission that levy distinct challenges to the gender status quo: gender mainstreaming (which overtly challenges gender bias) and evaluation (which does not have explicit feminist aspirations). With reference to five dimensions, we identify evaluation as relatively strongly institutionalized, and gender mainstreaming as relatively weakly institutionalized. We draw on the explanatory power of feminist institutionalism to unpack these findings, arguing that a feminist institutional perspective can shed light on this variation, as it provides greater insight into the formal and informal institutions that constrain, enable and shape the implementation of evaluation and gender mainstreaming. We assert that the notion of path dependency, the logic of appropriateness, and the concept of layering serve as useful tools to understand the gendered nature of the European Commission. This research provides insights into the institutional factors that impact the implementation of gender equality strategies (such as gender mainstreaming). In turn, this contributes to the development of more effective strategies to promote institutional change toward greater equality.

“Gendering” European security: policy changes, reform coalitions and opposition in the OSCE

ABSTRACTThe Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has rarely been considered in scholarship on gender and security, even though it was one of the regional security organisations whose gender policy predated the United Nations Security Council’s call for more international attention to issues related to women, peace and security in October 2000. Based on an analysis of official OSCE documents and on semi-structured interviews, we trace the integration of gender issues in the OSCE and explore the rationale behind and the challenges associated with it. We identify two phases of gender policy change in the OSCE and show how the integration of UNSCR 1325 brought about an expansion of OSCE gender policy from an exclusive focus on “soft” security issues towards increased inclusion of gender in the area of “hard” security. Drawing on historical and feminist institutionalism, we argue that reform coalitions were crucial for the policy changes in the OSCE but that they encountered institutional and ideational barriers, which hampered implementation of the gender policy. In light of rising opposition, our analysis warns of a backlash that might jeopardise current achievements.

The Feminist Institutional Dimensions of Power-Sharing and Political Settlements

This article applies key insights from feminist institutionalist analysis to power-sharing and political settlement in postconflict societies. Drawing on the concept of “gender orders,” allied with considerations of the informal and highly masculine rituals and rules that pervade institutional political life, the article demonstrates how apparent gendered gains in power-sharing are limited in their transformative effect. Despite a greater emphasis on female inclusion, as mandated by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, women's capacity to shape postconflict politics in power-sharing is limited. These limitations are shaped not only by the complexity of postconflict political landscapes but by women's restricted access to closed informal spaces pivotal to the masculine functioning of power-sharing. The tendency to view women's contributions in highly essentialized and feminized ways undercuts and devalorizes women's political work in power-sharing institutions. Urging greater attention to the informal life of political institutions, the article exposes the multiple layers of exclusion for women in postconflict political engagement.

Resisting gendered change: Feminist institutionalism and critical actors

Feminist institutionalism is concerned with the ‘rules of the game’ in political institutions. It is interested to explore how institutions create gender-just conditions in terms of the policies and actions they undertake and the make-up of the elected representatives they contain. It also has a growing interest in how institutions can resist or obstruct positive gendered change. It is argued here that employing the concept of ‘critical actors’ alongside a feminist institutionalist framework can further our understanding of why some institutions resist change. Using the example of abortion legislation in Northern Ireland, this article illustrates how the literatures on feminist institutionalism and critical actors can, when combined, help to build a fuller narrative of why gendered policy change does not happen.