Joan Eveline

What are we mainstreaming when we mainstream gender

Abstract In the policies and practices of gender mainstreaming, gender itself is a contested concept. This article examines versions of gender mainstreaming in two countries, focusing on approaches we term the Canadian and Netherlands models. We show how different understandings of gender are attached to different reform approaches, and intimate how particular ways of conceptualising gender inhibit the efficacy of the mainstreaming strategy. In order to increase that effectiveness we suggest that gender mainstreaming models incorporate a view of gender as a verb rather than as a noun, so that the focus is on the processes of gendering rather than on the static category of ‘gender’. We make the argument that such a shift could: a) incorporate a feminist ontology of the body; b) align an understanding of gender as an unfinished process with the ways in which those who make and implement policy experience gender mainstreaming as always partial and incomplete.

Mainstreaming and neoliberalism: a contested relationship

Abstract The paper offers a comparative analysis of dominant mainstreaming and gender analysis frameworks to consider the nature of the relationship between these equality initiatives and neoliberalism. We challenge the portrayal of mainstreaming as necessarily resistant to neoliberalism, and show how dominant forms of mainstreaming illustrate characteristics congruent with neoliberal premises and policy agendas. Our particular concern is the extent to which some forms of mainstreaming and gender analysis are unable to put in question neoliberal premises because of their ex post character. For this reason we describe the relationship as contested. Our goal is to identify ways to strengthen the potential of mainstreaming initiatives to step outside of and critique neoliberalisms strategic norms. To advance this objective we offer some first steps towards producing gender analysis as an ex ante intervention. Significantly, we suggest that effective implementation requires a focus on policys creative (active) role in constructing “problems” and in shaping gender relations.

Mainstreaming politics: gendering practices and feminist theory

Forms of gender analysis are being introduced worldwide as new methods for achieving gender equality. This paper identifies limitations in dominant frameworks and puts forward suggestions to improve the process. It advances a form of deep evaluation to institutionalise conceptual analysis as a part of policy design. It also proposes the development of a Gendering Impact Assessment model that attends to the ways in which policy produces gender, and that has the potential to put in question the strategic norms of broad policy objectives. Gender analysis is a tool associated with gender mainstreaming, the most recent innovation in equality policy. Broadly, mainstreaming is a commitment to guarantee that every part of an organisation assumes responsibility to ensure that policies impact evenly on women and men. Gender analysis, in its most common form, describes a methodology for assessing if policy is, or is not, attentive to the ‘differences’ between women and men. I specify ‘its most common form’ because gender analysis has several incarnations. The approach has its genesis in the development field where there currently exists a plethora of frameworks (see March et al. 1999). Most of the major international organisations, including the United Nations, the World Bank and the ILO, employ forms of gender analysis. It is also being used in many western democracies, including Canada, New Zealand, parts of Europe and the European Commission itself. In Australia the Women’s Budget Program (1984-1996) is often identified as a precursor of gender analysis models (Sharp and Broomhill 2002; Rankin and Vickers 2001). AusAID (1998) referred to gender analysis as a part of social analysis as early as 1998.1 More recently, the Howard Government has signalled an interest in gender mainstreaming and gender analysis. The Office of the Status of Women has been shifted from the Prime Minister’s Department to the Department of Family and Community Services, moving ‘so-called women’s issues into the mainstream’ (Goward 2004). Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward (2004), announced that this move creates the opportunity for ‘the entire public service to adopt gender analysis’. Given this development, it seems more important than ever to reflect upon just what ‘gender analysis’ entails.

Mentoring for gender equality and organisational change

Purpose – There is considerable literature about the impact of mentoring on the mentees but little is known about the effect of the mentoring relationship on the mentor. This paper aims to address that gap.Design/methodology/approach – Interviews with 15 mentors and survey responses from 128 mentees are used to examine a formal mentoring programme. Most emphasis is on the perspective of the mentors, raising questions about how they view outcomes for themselves and their mentees, as well as the effects of mentoring on the workplace culture over time. Questions about the mentoring relationship, including gender differences, are analysed against the background of a decade‐long organisational change strategy.Findings – Mentors report significant benefits for themselves and the mentee as well as the organisation itself as a result of their participation. The findings suggest that a long‐term mentoring programme for women has the potential to be an effective organisational change intervention. In particular, me...

Woman in the ivory tower: Gendering feminised and masculinised identities

Purpose – To challenge dualistic concepts of masculinity and femininity via a case for understanding gender as a verb.Design/methodology/approach – Using Deleuzian and feminist frameworks, the paper appraises six plateaus of desire and intensity through which gendered identities are assembled and re‐assembled in binary terms. The case study approach highlights the positioning and repositioning of a woman whose leadership of a leading academic institution involves breaking new ground in a male‐defined occupation, at a time when higher education is undergoing radical restructure.Findings – The paper shows how masculinised and feminised identity positions are effected through attempts to affix certainty to indistinct and multiple dimensions of being and becoming.Originality/value – Suggests that if we wish to understand gender in non‐dualistic terms we should think through the body to see both corporeality and identity as ambiguous and always unfinished assemblage

Gender Mainstreaming or Diversity Mainstreaming? The Politics of “Doing”

Amongst recent debates about whether it is preferable to campaign for gender mainstreaming or diversity mainstreaming this paper makes the case that both proposals involve fields of contestation. Either reform, it argues, could be taken in anti‐progressive directions. Hence, we redirect attention to the processes and practices that give an initiative content and shape, which we call the politics of “doing”. The argument here is that the actual “doings” involved in producing reform initiatives are key sites for social change. Hence, in order to produce reforms responsive to the needs and wishes of diverse groups of women, attention ought to be directed to ways of making those “doings” inclusive and democratic. Specifically we highlight the importance of privileging the views of marginalized women in any such policy deliberations and respecting their perspectives on the usefulness of appeals to identity. We introduce the concepts of “coalitions of engagement” and “deep listening” to generate discussion around these contentious issues.

Don't write about it: Writing "the other" for the ivory basement

This paper uses ethnographic data from an Australian university to explore constructs of “otherness” focusing on women in lower‐level university work. The work of these women, who hold both academic and non‐academic staff positions, takes place in the spatial and symbolic locale we call the “ivory basement“. Poststructural feminism provides the basis for an examination of the contradictions and subtleties of their identity work as they respond to the pressures of restructuring and managerialism. Faced with a request from these women for certain aspects of their relational work to remain unseen, unrecognised and unspoken, this study assents to that request and focuses instead on options for how poststructural feminism might elaborate their identity work stories. The paper is concerned with the tensions between womens own struggle with being positioned as “other” and poststructural feminist theorizing of the same.

Gender Analysis and Social Change: Testing the Water

Abstract This paper uses preliminary findings from an ARC-funded Linkage grant to speculate on the requirements for producing gender analysis as a change process. Gender analysis, commonly associated with gender mainstreaming, is a methodology aimed at ensuring that all projects, programs and policies are gender-inclusive and gender-sensitive. In the Linkage study existing models of gender analysis taken from Canada and The Netherlands are being tested for their usefulness in selected agencies in South Australia and Western Australia. The goal is to design gender analysis processes appropriate to specific Australian contexts. This paper reflects on the challenges and obstacles encountered in the project to date. It focuses in particular on the importance of creating space for extended debate and discussion of the concepts and issues relevant to gender equality and social change. The authors describe this space as “somewhere in the middle”.

Approaches to gender mainstreaming: What's the problem (represented to be)?

Introduction: Carol Bacchi and Joan Eveline Previous chapters have made reference to the need to rethink policy as a creative (productive or constitutive) process. The major purpose of this chapter is to clarify what this means and to illustrate the usefulness of this way of thinking about policy for studying gender mainstreaming and gender analysis. The specific focus is ‘gender proofing’ in Ireland and ‘gender impact assessment’ in the Netherlands. The underlying proposition in thinking about policies as productive, or as constitutive, is that policies and policy proposals give shape and meaning to the ‘problems’ they purport to ‘address’. That is, policy ‘problems’ do not exist ‘out there’ in society, waiting to be ‘solved’ through timely and perspicacious policy interventions. Rather, specific policy proposals ‘imagine’ ‘problems’ in particular ways that have real and meaningful effects. Hence, to understand how policies operate requires that we ask of policy proposals ‘ W hats the P roblem r epresented to be?’. This question forms the starting place for Bacchis (1999; 2009a) novel method of policy analysis (elaborated below), captured in the acronym WPR. The proposition that ‘problems’ do not ‘exist’ ‘out there’ in society does not ignore or downplay the full range of troubling conditions, including the subordination of women, that characterise social relations. Instead, it insists that how ‘problems’ are represented in policies – how they are discursively produced – affects the particular understanding given to those conditions at points in time and space, and that these understandings matter.

The invisibility of gendered power relations in domestic violence policy

Abstract This exploratory study seeks to illustrate how the policy context shapes the way policy actors engage with concepts of gender and practices of racism. The paper draws on two case studies in the context of family and domestic violence (FDV) policy and service development in an Australian State Government context. The first case study uses document analysis of a major public inquiry into Government agency responses to FDV in Indigenous communities. The second uses a policy audit tool to examine a policy development process in a department responsible for coordinating human service agencies, services and funding of community-sector FDV projects. These case studies reveal that both Aboriginal women and non-Aboriginal women can disappear from the concerns that FDV policy purports to solve. To demonstrate our argument, we show how the policy terminology of both ‘domestic violence’ and that of family violence’ can render gender and racism invisible.