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Looking local, finding global: paradoxes of gender mainstreaming in the Scottish Executive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2010

AMANDA WITTMAN
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Abstract

Gender mainstreaming is portrayed as the next step in the global gender equality landscape and has been widely adopted internationally in a variety of governments and political organisations. However, the radical potential of gender mainstreaming to transform organisations has not been fulfilled. In this article, I explore three paradoxes which are inherent in the intent, implementation and institutionalisation of gender mainstreaming. I argue that we cannot fully understand these global paradoxes without a better understanding of local experiences which underpin them in the everyday working lives of those people involved in advocating gender mainstreaming. Using results from an institutional ethnography of the implementation of the Gender Equality Duty by gender mainstreaming advocates in the Scottish Executive, I show that bureaucratic practices, fossilised norms and the continued reliance on soft measures to promote mainstreaming are reflections at the local level of barriers to the advancement of global gender mainstreaming. By taking seriously the local practices and knowledge of those who do gender mainstreaming, we can reflect on the inherent tensions within gender mainstreaming that prohibit its ability to truly transform the gender landscape at both the local and global level.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 51 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2010

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References

1 See, for example, M. Daly, ‘Gender Mainstreaming in Theory and Practice’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 12 (2005), pp. 433–50 and Judith Squires, The New Politics of Gender Equality, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Press, 2007).

2 This research is part of an ongoing PhD research project.

3 Y. Benschop and M. Verloo, ‘Sisyphus’ Sisters: Can Gender Mainstreaming Escape the Genderness of Organizations?’, Journal of Gender Studies, 15 (2006), pp. 19–33.

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7 For more information see: {http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/forbusinessesandorganisation/publicauthorities/Pages/PublicauthoritiesGenderequalityduty.aspx}.

8 Great Britain, Equality Act 2006, c. 84. Available at: {http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060003_en_1}.

9 J. Shaw, ‘Mainstreaming Equality and Diversity in the European Union, Currant Legal Problems, 58 (2005), pp. 255–312; Squires, New Politics of Gender Equality.

10 Mona Lena Krook and Judith Squires, ‘Gender Quotas and Gender Mainstreaming Competing or Complementary Representational Strategies?’, Paper presented at the Fifteenth International Conference of the Council for European Studies, Chicago, IL, 29 March–2 April 2006.

11 For further discussion, see C. Bacchi and J. Eveline, ‘Mainstreaming and Neoliberalism: A Contested Relationship’, Policy and Society: Journal of Public, Foreign and Global Policy, 22 (2004), pp. 98–118.

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13 Rounaq Jahan, The Elusive Agenda: Mainstreaming Women in Development (London: Zed Books, 1995); Lombardo, ‘Integrating or Setting the Agenda’; J. Squires, ‘Is Mainstreaming Transformative? Theorizing Mainstreaming in the Context of Diversity and Deliberation’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 12 (2005), pp. 366–88; Sylvia Walby, Theorising Patriarchy (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1990).

14 Squires, New Politics of Gender Equality. Bacchi and Eveline, ‘Mainstreaming and Neoliberalism’.

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16 See note 14 above, p. 697.

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19 True, ‘Mainstreaming Gender in Global Public Policy’.

20 Squires, New Politics of Gender Equality.

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22 Rai, ‘Gendering Global Governance’.

23 Ibid., pp. 591–2.

24 See True 2003; Daly 2005; Stratigaki 2005; Squires 2007.

25 Benschop and Verloo 2006.

26 See, for example, Rees 2005; Shaw 2005; Squires 2007.

27 T. Rees, Mainstreaming Equality in the European Union: Education, Training, and Labour Market Policies (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 194.

28 S. Nott, ‘Accentuating the Positive: Alternative Strategies for Promoting Gender Equality’, in Fiona Beveridge, Sue Nott and Kylie Stephen (eds), Making Women Count: Integrating Gender into Law and Policy-Making (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).

29 Squires, New Politics of Gender Equality.

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31 Woodward, ‘Too Late for Gender Mainstreaming?’; Benschop and Verloo, ‘Sisyphus’ Sisters’.

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33 Woodward, ‘Too Late for Gender Mainstreaming?’ p. 296.

34 Woodward, ‘Too Late for Gender Mainstreaming?’ p. 298.

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36 Pfister, ‘Mainstreamed Away?’ p. 531.

37 Benschop and Verloo, ‘Sisyphus’ Sisters’.

38 Ibid., p. 31.

39 M. F. Katzenstein, ‘Stepsisters: Feminist Movement Activism in Different Institutional Spaces’ in D. Meyer and S. Tarrow (eds), The social Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); J. Goldstone (ed.), States, Parties and Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); R. Morgan, ‘On Political Institutions and Social Movement Dynamics: The Case of the United Nations and the Global Indigenous Movement’, International Political Science Review, 28 (2007), pp. 273–92.

40 Goldstone, States, Parties and Social Movements.

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42 Goldstone, States, Parties and Social Movements, pp. 21–4.

43 Savage and Witz, Gender and Bureaucracy.

44 Ibid., p. 56.

45 Ibid., p. 57.

46 See, for example, Acker 1990, 1992; Connell 2005; Martin 2006. Also. M. Flood and B. Pease, ‘Undoing Men’s Privilege and Advancing Gender Equality in Public Sector Institutions, Policy and Society, 24 (2005), pp. 119–38 and T. Schofield and S. Goodwin, ‘Gender Politics and Public Policy Making: Prospects for Advancing Gender Equality’, Policy and Society, 24 (2005), pp. 22–41.

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50 Moon, ‘Resurrecting Prostitutes’, p. 134.

51 C. Cohn, ‘Motives and Methods: Using Multi-Sited Ethnography to Study US National Security Discourses’ in Brooke Ackerley, Maria Stern and Jackqui True (eds), Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 92.

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53 R. W. Connell, Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).

54 J. K. Gibson-Graham, ‘Beyond Global vs. Local: Economic Politics Outside the Binary Frame’, in Andrew Herod and Melissa Wright (eds), Geographies of Power: Placing scale. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002).

55 Acker, ‘Gender, Capitalism and Globalization’, p. 22.

56 Ibid., pp. 22–3.

57 Marie Campbell and Frances Gregor, Mapping Social Relations: A Primer in Doing Institutional Ethnography (Aurora, Ontario: Garamond Press, 2002). Also, Smith 1990, 1999, 2001, 2005, 2006.

58 Acker 1990, 1992.

59 Acker, ‘Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies’, p. 140.

60 See, for example, D. Britton, ‘The Epistemology of the Gendered Organisation’, Gender and Society, 14 (2000), pp. 418–34l; P. Y. Martin and D. Collinson, ‘Over the Pond and Across the Water’: Developing the Field of ‘Gendered Organisations’, Gender, Work and Organisation, 9 (2002), pp. 244–65; K. Ashcroft and D. Mumby, ‘Organizing a Critical Communicology of Gender and Work’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 166 (2004), pp. 19–43.

61 Campbell and Gregor, Mapping Social Relations, p. 29.

62 Smith, Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People, p. 22.

63 Campbell and Gregor, Mapping Social Relations, p. 15.

64 And politically.

65 Campbell and Gregor, Mapping Social Relations, p. 30.

66 Ibid., p. 43.

67 Ibid., p. 101.

68 Benschop and Verloo, ‘Sisyphus’ Sisters’, pp. 31.

69 Ibid., p. 29.

70 Ibid., p. 31.

71 R.W. Connell, ‘The Experience of Gender Change in Public Sector Organizations’, Gender, Work and Organization, 13 (2006), pp. 446, 448.

72 Informal interview, field notes, 20 July 2006.

73 Catherine Itzen and Janet Newman, Gender, Culture and Organizational Change: Putting Theory into Practice (London: Routledge,1995); Camilla Stivers, Gender Images In Public Administration: Legitimacy and the Administrative State, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2002).

74 Connell, ‘Gender Change’, p. 444.

75 Ibid., p. 447.

76 Ibid., p. 448.

77 See for example, Liisa Rantaliaiho and Tuula Heiskanen, Gendered Practices in Working Life (London: Macmillan, 1997); P.Y. Martin, ‘Practicing Gender at Work: Further Thoughts on Reflexivity’, Gender, Work and Organization, 10 (2006), pp. 227–40; J. Newman, ‘Regendering Governance’ in Janet Newman (ed.), Remaking Governance: People, Politics and the Public Sphere (Bristol: Policy Press, 2005), pp. 81–100.

78 Martin, ‘Practicing’, p. 260.

79 For further discussions of the pros and cons of using the concept of patriarchy, see Walby, Theorising Patriarchy. F. Colgan and S. Ledwith, ‘Women as Organisational Change Agents’ in Sue Ledwith and Fiona Colgan (eds), Women in Organisations: Challenging Gender Politics (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1996); R.W. Connell, Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), p. 110; Cynthia Cockburn, In the Way of Women: Men's Resistance to Sex Equality in Organisations (London: Macmillan, 1991).

80 D. Livesey, C. Taylor and P. Jones, ‘Civil Service Employment Statistics, 2006’, Economic & Labour Market Review, 1 (2007), pp. 36–40.

81 Field notes. Sept 2006 – Feb 2007.

82 R. W. Connell, ‘Advancing Gender Reform in Large-Scale Organisations’, Policy and Society, 24 (2005); Connell, ‘Gender Change’; Louse Chappell, Gendering Government: Feminist Engagement with the State in Australia and Canada (Vancouver, UBC Press, 2002); L. Chappell, ‘Comparing Political Institutions: Revealing the Gendered ‘Logic of Appropriateness’’, Politics & Gender, 2 (2006), pp. 223–5; Stivers, Gender Images.

83 Chappell, Gender Government; Chappell, ‘Comparing’; Stivers, Gender Images.

84 Stivers, Gender Images, p. 52.

85 Ibid., p. 54.

86 Chappell, ‘Comparing’.

87 Field notes, 19 July 2006.

88 Field notes, meeting minutes, 8 Feb 2007.

89 Emilie Marie Hafner-Burton and Mark A. Pollack, Mainstreaming Gender in the European Union: Getting the Incentives Right (2008). Available at SSRN: {http://ssrn.com/abstract=1287859}.

90 F. Beveridge, S. Nott and K. Stephen, ‘Mainstreaming: A Case for Optimism and Cynicism’, Feminist Legal Studies, 10 (2002), pp. 299–331; Hafner-Burton and Pollack, Mainstreaming Gender in the EU.

91 Woodward, ‘Too Late for Gender Mainstreaming?’, p. 297.

92 Hafner-Burton and Pollack, Mainstreaming Gender in the EU.

93 S. Mazey, ‘Gender Mainstreaming Strategies in the EU: Delivering an Agenda?’, Feminist Legal Studies, 10 (2002), pp. 227–40.

94 U. Liebert, ‘Europeanising Gender Mainstreaming: Constraints and Opportunities in the Multi-level Euro Polity’, Feminist Legal Studies, 10 (2002), pp. 241–56.

95 Daly 2005; Rees 2005; Squires 2007.

96 Field notes, Equality Impact Assessment training session, 2 Feb 2007.

97 Field notes, informal conversation after training, 2 Feb 2007.

98 Woodward, ‘Too Late for Gender Mainstreaming?’.

99 Beveridge and Nott, ‘Mainstreaming: A Case’, p. 310.