The Discursive Politics of Gender Equality

Stretching, Bending and Policy-Making

Emanuela Lombardo, Petra Meier, Mieke Verloo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781134031115
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Farmacologia

This book explores the discursive constructions of gender equality and the implications of these understandings in a broad range of policy fields.

Using gender equality as a prime example, a number of internationally renowned scholars offer a new vocabulary to identify and study processes of the reduction, amplification, shifting or freezing of meaning. The main aim of the book is to understand the dynamics and to reflect on the consequences of such discursive politics in recent policy making on gender equality. It explores both the potential opportunities that are opened up for the promotion of equality through discursive politics, and the limitations they impose. Distinctive features of the volume include:

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• chapters covering a range of case studies in Europe, the USA, and the Asia region, tackling contemporary political debates on equality

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• new insights of relevance to public policy practices such as gender mainstreaming, with theorizing on intersecting inequalities

The Discursive Politics of Gender Equality will be of interest to students and scholars, of political science, public policy, comparative politics, gender and women studies.

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Stretching and bending gender equality

A discursive politics approach¹

Emanuela Lombardo, Petra Meier and Mieke Verloo

Introduction

Gender equality has become widely accepted as a political goal over the last decades, and many countries and transnational institutions have committed themselves to this objective. Conventions have been signed, special bureaucracies and new political and administrative positions created, new policy and legal instruments developed and installed, and progress monitored in newly produced indices and rankings. While this might suggest a unity of meaning, gender equality has actually been hotly contested, been expressed by many different words and undergone various changes as a travelling concept in this global process. Grasping its specific changes in meaning but, more importantly, understanding why and how gender equality does alter its meaning, and thinking through why it matters what its meaning is, are the main ambitions of this book. We contend that, while it does matter greatly what meaning is attached to the concept of gender equality, the pros and cons of various meanings are not so clear-cut. This book therefore carefully explores what happens in these processes of change, and how we can improve our understanding of these changes.

In its journeys through times and places – from the twentieth to the twenty-first century, across different national borders, amidst different policy actors, at both institutional and non-institutional levels and across a variety of national and international organizations – the concept of gender equality is labelled differently. Scholars and political actors have tried to capture the various ways in which gender equality is understood, but they have also attempted to prioritize one meaning over another. While several terms designating gender equality are used in theory and practice, the various labels are seldom clearly distinguishable. Across countries, the label used can be equal opportunity or the promotion or advancement of women, but also emancipation, equality or empowerment of women, to give a few examples. While all these labels can be linked back to theoretical and political debates that articulate them as different forms of each other, research and practice show that what is labelled equal opportunity in one context can be very similar to what is called empowerment in another, while the content of similar labels can diverge tremendously. Labels matter, but they can be a misleading feature in understanding the content and strategy of gender equality policies.

Also, as a political and policy concept, gender equality is frequently linked to other political and policy goals, adding yet another layer of meaning. In the 1960s, the EU linked gender equality to (un)fair competition, in the 1970s and 1980s to combating unemployment, in the 1990s to the Lisbon criteria of full employment and the knowledge economy and, most recently, to fighting discrimination and promoting diversity. The United Nations have connected it with development and demography, the International Labour Organization with ‘decent work’. Individual countries have associated it with civil rights or labour market conditions. Moreover, gender equality actually consists of two concepts – gender and equality – that have acquired meaning related to aspects of gender (for instance, division of labour, sexual difference, reproductive relations), but also related to aspects of equality (for example, class, race/ethnicity). In this sense, gender equality is a concept that is part of the multidimensional reality of equality, a term that is open to contestation of its meaning as much as gender is.

The travelling nature of the concept of gender equality implies pros and cons for the gender struggle itself. To understand these, it is important to keep in mind that not only the content of gender equality travels, but also feminism as a form or process, meant as a practice of debate and struggle (among women mostly) over the different meanings of gender equality or feminism (Davis 2002; Schmidt-Gleim and Verloo 2003; Lombardo and Verloo 2009). During the travelling process, feminism as a form or process enables the articulation of a wider set of meanings of the concept that may include many different women’s positions. As Davis (2002) argues in her story of global feminism, what travelled well in the specific project of gender equality was the method of letting women talk and share their own experience and knowledge on the issue of body politics. When travelling across different contextual and conceptual borders, gender equality as a form of feminism sets in motion different debates that may have unpredictable consequences for the political gender struggle. In particular, they may trigger a multiplicity of (feminist) practices that take place in different contextual locations, continuously adapting ‘to the changing agendas and guises of the gender struggle’ (Schmidt-Gleim and Verloo 2003:27). In this sense, the adaptation of gender equality in different directions could either serve the need to face the changing dynamics of gendered power relations or become co-opted for other political goals.

The fact that the concept of gender equality has travelled so well across a variety of borders indicates that it is a concept open to contestation. It can encompass different meanings and therefore fit into a broad range of contexts, depending on how actors from these different contexts frame it. All this ‘travelling’, however, leaves its traces. The concept is always broadened, narrowed down or even submitted to other goals than that of gender equality to fit into existing policy frames. In each case, the changes in meaning are strongly connected to the political positions that are taken and the ideological strands (feminist or other) that are defended. These changes are the complex result of the activities of a wide range of actors who try to accommodate or co-opt other trends for their own purposes, or attempt to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality, never fully able to steer the actual changes in their intended direction.

In this book, we explore the dynamics of a discursive construction of gender equality. We study how gender equality is fixed in different concepts, is stretched towards wider meanings or reduced to particular ones, according to the actors’ intentional or unintentional framing, and is bent to fit a variety of other goals. The main objective of the book is to understand the dynamics of discursive politics and to reflect on the possibilities and limitations of framing processes by exploring the opportunities that are opened up for the promotion of equality. The rest of this chapter sets out the main concepts, approaches and topics of the book. It introduces the different ways in which the meanings of gender equality are fixed, shrunk, stretched and bent in policy discourses. It links them to the underlying policy mechanisms and reflects on the possibilities and limitations of these discursive processes. It discusses gender equality as a continuously contested, open concept that can be filled with a variety of meanings. It theorizes discursive policies and framing processes. Finally, it attempts to set up an understanding of the discursive politics of gender equality, an issue to be picked up in the concluding chapter.

Shaping the meanings of gender equality

The concepts of fixing, stretching, shrinking and bending define a process in between two moments through which the meaning of gender equality changes. Although this shaping process may open up opportunities for feminist achievements, it may also have unintended or intended negative consequences.

In the process of shaping its meaning, the created definitions of gender equality can be fixed for some time. We do not use the term of fixing in the sense of repairing this meaning, but in the sense of freezing it temporarily. This freezing of its meaning is frequent, owing to attempts to define what is to be understood by gender equality. Fixing, then, is the result of a discursive struggle. The formal recognition of gender equality in legislation is a good example of when and how feminists stretched the existing frames on democracy and citizenship, and thereby reshaped the overall political opportunity structure for succeeding in their struggle. Feminist activists’ claims for gender equality in political decision-making – enshrined as parity democracy (France), gender democracy (Germany) or a balanced participation of men and women in decision-making (EU) – are more specific examples of such fixing of the meaning of gender equality. Fixing, in that case, is an achievement in the gender struggle, meaning that gender equality has been enshrined in legal or political documents and has become recognized as a no longer contested goal.

The fixing of what is to be understood by gender equality also creates new opportunities. In many cases, the fixing of gender equality in numerical terms, through gender quotas, puts women into positions of political decision-making. Similarly, the fixing of goals with respect to gender equality in policy areas such as pension rights ensures that such problems receive attention and do not get overseen within broader attempts to reform the pension system. However, gender equality can also lose part of its dynamic when it is fixed to one particular understanding. This can be the case when a certain understanding is laid down in a text with a very authoritative status, e.g. the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), or when a certain understanding acquires an authoritative status through a process of negotiation, learning or diffusion, an example of which is the Council of Europe report on, and definition of, gender mainstreaming (Group of Specialists 1998; Verloo 2005a). The potential problem with fixing is the loss of reflexivity, as Bacchi puts it in this volume, the loss of awareness that the definition of what is to be understood by gender equality comprises but a partial understanding. Fixing might prevent reflexivity, which in its turn might deprive gender equality of a dynamic approach.

If the concept of gender equality is pinned down to specific labels that might narrow down its content (Verloo 2005a), a shrinking of the concept of gender equality shapes the latter by reducing its meaning to something that is confined to a particular policy area or a specific interpretation of an issue. Gender equality can, for instance, be shrunk into non-discrimination in a strictly legal sense. Another typical example is the reduction of gender equality to equal opportunities for women and men in the labour market. Bacchi (1999) argues that most contemporary gender policies assume that women become equal to men when they have equal access to the labour market, which means that most provisions on gender equality target the area of employment or adopt a labour market perspective. Shrinking, then, and the same can go for fixing, often involves a simplification of social problems and of the required solutions. Reducing gender equality to a problem of labour market access and, for instance, improved reconciliation facilities allows for targeting child and other care infrastructure. While this enables a straightforward approach to the problem of reconciling paid and care work, and the concentration of resources in this sector, other aspects of gender inequality, let alone within the sphere of the labour market, are left aside. This becomes problematic once shrinking is inspired by a conscious choice to manage meagre resources, and effectively fixes gender equality more narrowly.

Yet another example of a shrinking of the concept of gender equality can be seen in the already mentioned issue of gender inequality in politics, where it tends to be reduced, in policy and scholarly debates, to a problem of women’s political representation. This narrows the definition of the problem, as women’s quantitative representation is one of the many possible interpretations of the issue, and through its predominance in the debate leaves other relevant issues untouched, for instance, structural obstacles to women’s equal participation in politics, male domination and ‘all-male’ political networks, and the empowering role played by women’s political networks (Lombardo et al. 2007). Gender inequality in politics is also a good example of the relation between the shrinking and fixing of the concept of gender equality, on the one hand, and the question of depoliticization, on the other. The predominant framing of the issue of gender inequality in politics as ‘women’s political under-representation’ suffers from what Meier et al. (2005) have named the ‘benchmarking fallacy of women in political decision-making’. When the dominant focus of a gender equality issue is on increasing women’s numerical representation, there is a risk of depoliticizing the issue by suggesting that gender equality is a matter of achieving target figures rather than transforming power relations between men and women.

Stretching is the opposite of the processes involved in the shrinking of the meaning of gender equality. It points at the broadening of the concept of gender equality by developing a larger meaning that expands on its previous understanding in a given context. Stretching always incorporates more meanings of gender equality, and this extension can work in different directions. For instance, an initial definition of gender equality as non-discrimination can be broadened to include substantive equality, but stretching can also imply that a definition of substantive equality is to incorporate initiatives of equal opportunities. A good example of the stretching of gender equality can be found in Booth and Bennett’s (2002) definition of gender mainstreaming, which comprises a much larger array of actions than the definition put forward by the Council of Europe (Group of Specialists 1998), also including targeted actions. Both shrinking and stretching can reflect a lack of reflexivity, and reveal only a partial perspective on reality, but while shrinking tends to involve a reduction and simplification of gender equality, stretching often dilutes or blurs the previous meaning of gender equality.

Stretching is also partly incited by the fact that gender equality ties together two independent – but interrelated – concepts, gender and equality. The multidimensional reality of equality incites stretching initiatives that extend the meaning of the concept, and this is a good example of where a tension between gender and equality can arise. Gender equality is a family member of other equality goals, and this can lead either to drawing borders between the different equality struggles or to stretching borders to readapt them in a more inclusive way (Walby 2005; Verloo 2006). In this sense, a stretching of the concept of gender equality to other inequalities may strengthen the struggle against different forms of inequality (Squires 2005). At the same time, the difficulties that public policies reveal as they stretch gender equality in order to address multiple forms of inequality are an important component of discursive processes, and need to be addressed (see Ferree and also Lombardo and Verloo in this volume).

The last shaping of meanings that gender equality undergoes in policy discourses is bending, which mainly differs from the former shapings in its relation to the goal of gender equality. In the processes of fixing, shrinking and stretching, the goal of gender equality is firmly present. In the first two, the goal of gender equality is still central, even though it is often fragmented. In processes of stretching, the goal of gender equality might become one among many, but it is still central. Bending, on the contrary, is a process that shapes meaning at the expense of the goal of gender equality. Bending occurs when the concept of gender equality is adjusted to make it fit some other goal than the achievement of gender equality itself (on this also see the chapter by Lombardo and Verloo). The issue of reconciling paid and care work is an example of fixing, reducing or stretching gender equality when it is about the enabling of women to combine paid and care work. It becomes one of bending when the focus shifts to economic growth or demographic deficits. For instance, the framing of ‘family policies’ in the European Union (EU) over the last decade was at first connected with the idea of sharing tasks within the family. The need to share was a condition to create equal opportunities for women in the labour market, as can be found in the 1992 Council Recommendation on childcare. However, as Stratigaki (2004) argues, when this issue was later incorporated in the European employment strategies of the 1990s, it gradually shifted meaning from the goal of sharing to that of reconciling work and family life. The main accent was placed on the organization of labour, a shift that allowed the growing prioritization of competitiveness and the creation of employment. From an objective of gender equality, the issue of family policies was bent to become a purely market-oriented objective, which involved the reproduction and consolidation of women’s traditional roles as primary caregivers. Bending the concept of equality within the family to make it fit the dominant labour market agenda has contributed to degendering the issue, blocking gender equality goals such as the challenging of existing unequal gender roles within the family. In effect, reconciliation policies appear more focused on solving the problem of demographic decline and promoting economic development than progressing in gender equality (Meier et al. 2007).

The reasons for actors to engage in bending initiatives can be multiple, such as, among others, legal constraints, available data or other resources, preferences of particular policy actors or resistances to the introduction of equality issues within the political environment. Bending the concept of gender equality can serve the need to strategically frame the issue in order to put it on the political agenda. Pollack and Hafner-Burton (2000), in their study on the application of gender mainstreaming in the European Commission, argue that gender advocates have strategically framed gender mainstreaming to make it f...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Series editor’s preface
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Stretching and bending gender equality: a discursive politics approach
• 2 The issue of intentionality in frame theory: the need for reflexive framing
• 3 Beyond the politics of location: the power of argument in gender equality politics
• 4 Stretching and bending the meanings of gender in equality policies
• 5 Stretching gender equality to other inequalities: political intersectionality in European gender equality policies
• 6 Inequality, intersectionality and the politics of discourse: framing feminist alliances
• 7 Bending towards growth: discursive constructions of gender equality in an era of governance and neoliberalism
• 8 Trading-in gender equality: gendered meanings in EU trade policy
• 9 Stretching, bending and inconsistency in policy frames on gender equality: discursive windows of opportunity?
• 10 Grounding policy evaluation in a discursive understanding of politics
• 11 The discursive logic of ranking and benchmarking: understanding gender equality measures in the European Union
• 12 Conclusions: a critical understanding of the discursive politics of gender equality