Women's Policy Machinery Research Articles

The Trouble with Institutions: How Women's Policy Machineries Can Undermine Women's Mass Participation

It is no secret that men and women continue to have unequal access in democratic systems. In nearly every country for which data exist, women participate less in politics and hold fewer government positions than men (Beauregard 2014). In recent years, analysis of this ongoing problem has taken an institutional turn: feminist institutionalism examines how the formal and informal “rules of the game” create persistent bias against women in office and the advancement of feminist policy agendas (e.g., Krook and Mackay 2011). Such analysis is important and enlightening, but it illuminates only part of the story. An ongoing problem in most democracies is women's lower level of participation: women are less interested in politics, less likely to be active in campaigning, and less likely to contact officials. While women often vote at the same rate as men, their lower rates of political engagement and higher-intensity forms of participation remains to be explained (Coffe and Bolzendahl 2011; Verba, Burns, and Schlozman 1997).

Introduction: Gendering “New” Institutions

Challenging and transforming political institutions has long been recognized as central to feminist projects of change. Existing institutions can be reformed and/or new institutions created. Over several decades, feminist political scientists, activists, and equality-seeking states have addressed questions of how the existing institutions of governance—global, regional, and local—work in gendered ways and how they can be reformed or redesigned to incorporate gender justice and promote gender equality and women's human rights. We now have a wealth of case studies about efforts to insert new actors, new rules, and new ideas into old institutions. Work has focused on three trends in institutional reform: the adoption of gender quotas, which aim to transform the institutions of political recruitment (see, for example, Franceschet, Krook, and Piscopo 2012; Krook 2009); the creation of women's policy machinery; and the introduction of gender mainstreaming, the last two of which aim to counteract the traditional mobilization of masculinist bias in the institutions of legislation and policy making (see, for example, McBride and Mazur 2010, Squires 2007, True 2003). However, this rich field of research presents us with a puzzle: On the one hand, there's been a rapid proliferation and remarkable diffusion over the past 30 years—for example, quotas (of one form or another) have been adopted in more than 100 countries. On the other hand, however, there have been variable and sometimes unpredictable outcomes in practice, highlighting the difficulty of inserting new claims into old institutions.

Leaders or Laggards: engendering sub-national governance through women's policy machineries in Spain and Poland

More than three decades of international best practice and a rich body of scholarship demonstrate that women's policy machinery (WPM) is a crucial tool for promoting feminist policymaking. A new and unstudied form of WPM is emerging at the sub-national level. In this paper, we examine the effects of (1) regional leftist party governance and (2) sub-state durability on feminist policymaking. We employ Stetson and Mazur's model of effective, feminist WPM and operationalize policy Influence and Access provided to feminist groups. Drawing on four regional cases within Spain and Poland, we use field research, interviews, and party documents to examine whether regional leftist party governance and federalized state structure are associated with WPM ‘Leaders’ in feminist policymaking. We find that regional leftist governance is associated with WPMs that offer feminist policy and empower feminist groups; however, sub-state durability modifies the impact of party governance. We conclude with suggestions for further research.

Masculinized or Marginalized: Decentralization and Women's Status in Regional Polish Institutions

Research on gendered institutions reveals that women often face a dilemma of being masculinized or marginalized. Female politicians downplay gender differences to fit in or risk sanction for highlighting women's issues. Sub‐national institutions are closer and less prestigious, so decentralization may facilitate women's participation and gender equality. Examining Poland's 1998 decentralization, I analyze 40 semi‐structured interviews with male and female regional political elites using a mixed‐methods approach to test five hypotheses about gender attitudes. Women initially respond “no gender inequalities” but change their answers; many support the notion of more women in politics, but not quotas or women's policy machinery. The author wishes to thank Lisa Baldez, Sunita Parikh, Kathleen Montgomery, Irfan Nooruddin, Mona Lena Krook, Candice Ortbals, John Carey, Gary Miller, Erica Townsend Bell, Celeste Montoya, the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions; the Eisenhower Institute for supporting this research, and most importantly, the legislators, civil servants, and women's group leaders in Poland who participated in this study. All errors are my own.

The Rise and Decline of Women's Policy Machinery in British Columbia and New South Wales: A Cautionary Tale

This article presents a comparative analysis of the institutional trajectories traced by women's policy agencies within government in the province of British Columbia in Canada and in the state of New South Wales in Australia. In both cases, a period during which the principal women's policy agency took the form of a freestanding government ministry was followed by a period during which that ministry (along with an array of women's policy agencies located elsewhere in government) was dismantled. The partisan complexion of the governments undertaking these initiatives has been quite different in the two cases, and presents an apparent paradox. The article explores this paradox, as well as other patterns observable across the two cases, and provides an assessment of their implications.

Developing Countries and New Democracies Matter: An Overview of Research on State Feminism Worldwide

Since the 1970s, institutions with the explicit purpose of advancing women's rights and status have been established in an overwhelming majority of countries. In political science research, these institutions usually are called “women's policy machineries,” “state feminist institutions,” or “gender equality agencies.” The people who work in them are often referred to as “state feminists.” This article offers a general overview of academic studies on state feminism, the majority of which were published in the last decade. Generally speaking and with few exceptions, social scientists researching state feminism in postindustrial countries tend to consider only academic work on other postindustrial countries and ignore scholarly analyses of developing countries and new democracies. Countries outside the postindustrial world have women's institutions, and there is no reason to disregard them.

Jumbled Women's Activism: Subnational And International Influences On Galician Equality Politics

International perspectives regarding gender equality have materialized in Galicia, the most northwestern region of Spain. This article examines how international and subnational factors have affected Galician nationalist feminists, rural women's associations and bureaucrats working in women's policy machineries. The article explains how these equality actors similarly base their activism on local and international themes, yet maintain different stances on the meaning of equality. I uncover how the subnational manifestation of women's policy machineries – themselves an international phenomenon – hastened diversity and even discontent among local equality actors. I conclude that subnational efforts at equality promotion do not always produce a bold version of feminism within local societies.

Decentralizing Engagements: Women and the Democratization Process in Indonesia

Previous articleNext article No AccessComparative Perspectives Symposium: DemocratizationDecentralizing Engagements: Women and the Democratization Process in IndonesiaMelani BudiantaMelani BudiantaDepartment of Literature, Faculty of HumanitiesUniversity of Indonesia Search for more articles by this author Department of Literature, Faculty of HumanitiesUniversity of IndonesiaPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 31, Number 4Summer 2006 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/504338 Views: 556Total views on this site Citations: 11Citations are reported from Crossref © 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Muhammad Ammar Hidayahtulloh Ideological Contestation and Gender Policy Reforms in Post- Reformasi Indonesia, Journal of Contemporary Asia 19 (Feb 2023): 1–24.https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2023.2177558Dina Afrianty Rising public piety and the status of women in Indonesia two decades after reformasi, TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia 8, no.11 (Nov 2019): 65–80.https://doi.org/10.1017/trn.2019.14Vina Salviana Darvina Soedarwo, Gonda Yumitro, Nurul Zuriah COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GENDER EDUCATION BETWEEN PKS INDONESIA AND MUSLIM LEAGUE INDIA, Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews 8, no.22 (Apr 2020): 507–512.https://doi.org/10.18510/hssr.2020.8258Annisa R Beta Commerce, piety and politics: Indonesian young Muslim women’s groups as religious influencers, New Media & Society 21, no.1010 (Apr 2019): 2140–2159.https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819838774Hani Yulindrasari, Heny Djoehaeni Rebo nyunda: Is it decolonising early childhood education in Bandung, Indonesia?, Journal of Pedagogy 10, no.11 (Aug 2019): 57–75.https://doi.org/10.2478/jped-2019-0003Tanya Jakimow, Kurniawati Hastuti Dewi, Asima Yanty Siahaan The Ethics of Social Care in Indonesia: Women’s Perspectives on Care in Politics, Development and Policy*, Asian Studies Review 43, no.22 (Apr 2019): 276–294.https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2019.1586830Nankyung Choi Women’s political pathways in Southeast Asia, International Feminist Journal of Politics 21, no.22 (Oct 2018): 224–248.https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2018.1523683 Riswanda, Janet McIntyre-Mills, Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes Prostitution and Human Rights in Indonesia: A Critical Systemic Review of Policy Discourses and Scenarios, Systemic Practice and Action Research 30, no.33 (Jul 2016): 213–237.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11213-016-9393-4Lyn Parker WHERE ARE THE WOMEN IN MULTICULTURALISM?, Australian Feminist Studies 26, no.7070 (Dec 2011): 433–452.https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2011.621176S. Schech, M. Mustafa The Politics of Gender Mainstreaming Poverty Reduction: An Indonesian Case Study, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 17, no.11 (Feb 2010): 111–135.https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxp025Meg E. Rincker, Candice D. Ortbals Leaders or Laggards: engendering sub-national governance through women's policy machineries in Spain and Poland, Democratization 16, no.22 (Apr 2009): 269–297.https://doi.org/10.1080/13510340902732557

Managing trade engagements? Mapping the contours of state feminism and women's political activism

This article examines the impact on Canadian trade policy of the failure of official Canadian commitments to adopt gender equity policies. This failure must be understood within the context of broader restructuring of the Canadian state and state‐society relations. As Jane Jenson and Susan Phillips have argued, the Canadian “citizenship regime” has undergone dramatic changes in recent years. Neo‐liberal globalization destabilizes pre‐existing divisions between the national and the international, and puts strain on domestic practices of citizenship and representation. In particular, the article focuses on two related and emerging phenomena. First, international gender commitments, such as those at the Beijing meeting, seem to produce a widening of political space for a gender inclusive polity, although, simultaneously, the commitment to gender‐based analysis coincided with the Canadian state's retreat from materially supporting and empowering grassroots women's groups. Second, women's policy machinery, such as Status of Women Canada, and feminist bureaucrats, “femocrats”, have identified international trade as a key policy priority. However, this identification takes place at the margins of the liberal democratic state and under a set of structural constraints. As a result, attempts to promote a gender analysis of trade issues encounter the economic rationalism promulgated by the Department of Finance, and Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The logic of economic rationalism is not gender sensitive. This has significant implications for the relationship between women's grassroots activism and those women pushing a feminist agenda within the state under the terms of economic globalization.

Women's Movements and the State: Job-Training Policy in France and the U.S.

The goal of this article is to propose a model of state feminism to analyze the impact of women's movements on state activities in post-industrial democracies. It builds on conventional theories of social movement impact, specifically addressing problems of longitudinal and comparative analyses, and introduces an intervening variable-the role of women's policy machineries. This study examines the role of these machineries in France and the United States in injecting feminist stances into the content and processes of six job-training policy debates and assesses the explanatory usefulness of two clusters of independent variables. The findings challenge the conventional wisdom about women's movement successes in the U.S. and France by showing that a strong movement does not necessarily lead to a full state response in the absence of intervention of women's policy machineries. In turn they point to the importance of left-wing govemments and the relation of the women's movement to them. The conclusion includes plans for further testing of the state feminism framework by means of comparative studies in other countries and other policy areas.

Gendering Policy Analysis in the Government of British Columbia: Strategies, Possibilities and Constraints

What are the prospects for challenging the state of affairs described by Sunera Thobani? What role, if any, can women's policy machinery play in this undertaking? In this article, I explore these questions through an analysis of the Ministry of Women's Equality in British Columbia.

How Australia came to have a National Women's Health Policy.

A National Women's Health Policy was launched in Australia in 1989, and Australia became the only country to have a comprehensive policy on women's health. The policy is intended to provide a framework for decision-making in both mainstream and separate women's health services. The author examines the forces and factors that led to the formulation and adoption of the policy, then addresses the question of why Australia is alone in choosing a national policy as a focus for women's health action. A number of key influences, either absent or weaker in comparable countries, worked together to facilitate policy development. The activities of women working in a number of arenas coincided with the election of relatively supportive governments, creation of women's policy machinery in bureaucracies, employment of feminists in key positions, and opportunities for policy expansion afforded by federalism. These influences, within the Australian ideological context of strong support for social liberalism, account for the country's distinctive policy position.