Hanna Ylöstalo

Organizational perspective to gender mainstreaming in the Finnish state administration

ABSTRACT Gender mainstreaming has been celebrated as a new policy strategy for change in gender relations. However, its transformative potential seems to be lost in the process of implementation. The aim of this article is to evaluate the policy effectiveness of gender mainstreaming and its ability to bring about change in gendered social structures and practices. Previous research has focused on gender mainstreaming as a policy strategy. This article provides a new perspective on the problems of implementation by approaching gender mainstreaming from an organizational perspective. Gender mainstreaming takes place in certain organizational contexts, implemented by local actors. This article reveals the practices of implementation in the Finnish state administration, specifically in the Ministry of Defence. The analysis is based on a discursive reading of thirteen group and individual interviews collected in the Ministry of Defence in 2012. The article pinpoints two interlinking problems concerning implementation of gender mainstreaming on the organizational level. First, the state officials, who should implement gender mainstreaming, do not have enough information to do so successfully. Second, there is resistance toward gender mainstreaming on the organizational level. This article suggests that negotiations about gender, gender equality and gender mainstreaming as complex issues concerned with social power relations should be included in the process of implementing gender mainstreaming.

Exploring the possibilities of gender equality pedagogy in an era of marketization

ABSTRACT In this article, we research and revisit our own experiences of gender equality work to determine the societal and discursive power relations that have shaped gender equality. We conducted our study in Finland, a ‘Nordic model of gender equality’, but we argue that these results have worldwide relevance, especially since Nordic models of gender equality and education have been exported globally. By combining earlier research, our own extensive experience of conducting gender equality work, and previous literature on feminist pedagogy, we examine the possibilities of what we call ‘gender equality pedagogy’ in an era of marketization. To develop the concept of gender equality pedagogy, we ask how combining an analysis of gender equality work with feminist pedagogy can help to acknowledge and utilize power relations. We suggest that understanding gender equality work as a form of pedagogic practice might help overcome some of the barriers that gender equality work has encountered for decades.