Season Hoard

Gendering Comparative Policy Studies: Towards Better Science

Feminist policy scholars in Western Europe first acknowledged the empirical gaps and gender biases in theory and methodology used in the study of the state and policy in the early 1980s. By the early 1990s, researchers in North America and Australia joined their Western European counterparts in the new feminist academic enterprise that sought to systematically study the interconnections between the social construction of men’s and women’s identities, policy and the state; in other words to ‘gender’ the study of state action. In the mid 1990s, a loose methodological consensus developed within this transnational community around conventions for conducting research, developing theory and reporting findings; a consensus, which moved the new field, Feminist Comparative Policy (FCP), into a stage of vitality and institutionalization. In 2012, with over 400 published pieces, an estimated 20 million euros in research funding, over 100 active researchers and four journals that serve as publication outlets — Social Politics, International Journal of Feminist Politics, Politics and Gender and Women, Politics and Policy — FCP holds an important place in comparative policy studies and political science more broadly speaking.

Comparative strength of women's movements over time: conceptual, empirical, and theoretical innovations

ABSTRACT Womens movements in Western democracies have a long history, yet there are few conclusions we can draw with confidence about their trajectories over the decades. In recent years, scholars have begun to use conceptual tools that allow for more valid and reliable comparison across a variety of temporal, sectoral, and cultural contexts. Such efforts are necessary to construct sound theory about womens movements, their characteristics, and their impacts. This article contributes to these ongoing efforts by further developing the concept of movement strength in terms of mobilization and institutionalization as a more promising way to compare variations in womens movement change. The analysis begins with current scholarship on womens movements as well as the concepts developed by the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State (RNGS) project to offer a new and arguably more reliable and valid way of studying changes in movement strength. Using RNGS data on movements in 13 Western democracies, from the 1970s to the early 2000s, the article tracks degrees and patterns of mobilization and institutionalization and illustrates how this approach can add to the project of theorizing about womens movements as drivers and outcomes cross-nationally and over time.

Communities Ready for Takeoff: Integrating Social Assets for Biofuel Site-Selection Modeling

Abstract. Although much of the social science literature supports the importance of community assets for success in many policy areas, these assets are often overlooked when selecting communities for new infrastructure facilities. Extensive collaboration is crucial for the success of environmental and economic projects, yet it often is not adequately addressed when making siting decisions for new projects. This article develops a social asset framework that includes social, creative, and human capital to inform site-selection decisions. This framework is applied to the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance project to assess community suitability for biofuel-related developments. This framework is the first to take all necessary community assets into account, providing insight into successful site selection beyond current models. The framework not only serves as a model for future biorefinery projects but also guides tasks that depend on informed location selection for success.

Assessing the Factors that Impact the Success of Gender Experts in Public Policy: The Search for Necessity

When asked if there were any circumstances that she felt made her expertise more likely to be utilized or implemented, one gender expert stated, “I don’t think it is that simple … these ingredients get that recipe” (Gender Expert 2012). While the individual eventually did reveal several factors that she felt were most important, the initial response to this question from many respondents was that it was difficult to narrow down the conditions that lead to gender expert success. Many of the interview participants and survey respondents have worked on a variety of projects for several different organizations, and given this range of experience, narrowing the factors that contribute to success seemed an arduous task given the fact that these conditions may substantially differ depending on the case in question. The last two chapters presented valuable insights into the factors that could potentially impact the success of gender experts in public policy; however, the difficulty expressed by many respondents when attempting to narrow down these conditions contributes to the notion that scholars examining gender expertise need to use approaches that assume the “ingredients” for achieving a certain outcome are complex, and different “ingredients” may achieve the same result.

Gender Expert Success in Public Policy: Towards a Better Understanding

The results of this research provide many reasons to be enthusiastic regarding the impact of gender experts in Western postindustrial democracies and prominent international institutions worldwide. Gender experts are getting into the policy process. They are being asked by government actors to testify in parliament, provide research on policy issues, and help develop policies and projects in some of the most important institutions globally. Perhaps even more importantly, gender expert recommendations are being incorporated into formally adopted policies and projects, increasing the chance for truly impacting the lives of women.

Conceptualizing Gender Expertise: Locating the Expertise in Gender Expertise

The concept of expertise has a detailed history within the social sciences; however, gender expertise, and more specifically the conceptualization of gender expertise, has received relatively little attention in non-feminist and feminist literatures. This absence of attention to the conceptualization of gender expertise should not be sustained in a political environment in which gender equality is receiving increasing focus. The exclusion of women from analysis is nothing new; since the 1980s, feminist scholars have been creating and modifying concepts in order to create better scientific theory that can account for women and gender (Goertz and Mazur 2008). This process, referred to as gendering, involves “bringing out or making explicit the hidden biases and assumptions in standard conceptualizations” (Goertz and Mazur 2008, 7). The concept of expertise and its historical use, which has virtually excluded women and gender expertise, requires gendering in order to fully understand and analyze the current political environment in which gender expertise is becoming increasingly important.

“Fighting Against Windmills”? Identifying the Ingredients of Policy Success

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) published a list of 312 national mechanisms for gender equality in 2011. This total has increased since 2005 when the figure was 211 national mechanisms, and since 2010 when the total was 291 mechanisms. While these figures provide no information regarding the relative power of each of these national mechanisms, it is clear that the total number of national machineries for gender equality have increased substantially since the early 1990s.

Locating the Experts: Identifying the Actors, Mapping the Terrain

In September of 1995, the Commission on the Status of Women and the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) organized the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. The focus of the conference was the advancement of women in several areas, including human rights, poverty, decision making, and violence against women, as well as other areas of concern (United Nations n.d.). The Beijing Conference was attended by a number of NGOs and media representatives, and 189 governments participated in the forum, which resulted in The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (United Nations n.d.). The Platform for Action signified international commitment to the advancement of women through several measures, including a unanimous agreement to “design, implement and monitor, with full participation of women, effective, efficient and mutually reinforcing gender-sensitive policies and programmes” (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 1997). One important result of the Fourth World Conference on Women was the adoption of gender mainstreaming as a strategy to combat gender inequality and consequently increase political support and visibility of gender equality policies worldwide.

Knowledge, Expertise, and Public Policy: The Changing Relationship Between Science and Public Policy

In February of 2011, the Quality in Gender+ Equality Policies project (QUING) held an international conference entitled “Advancing Gender Training in Theory and Practice” in Madrid. QUING features several projects designed to compare gender+ equality policies across Europe. The goal of the last phase of the QUING project OPERA was to improve gender equality policies and gender mainstreaming through the direct translation of knowledge to policymakers via training (QUING n.d.). The goals of translating knowledge directly to policymakers produced several meetings and eventually led to the conference in Madrid.

Triangulating the Factors that Impact Success: Searching for Common Explanations of Policy Success

Despite the number of governmental and nongovernmental institutions that have utilized gender experts to inform policy, the interview data presented in Chapter 4 reveal several factors that limit the success of gender experts in public policy. Perhaps more importantly, the interview data reveal a number of limitations on the impact of gender experts due to several circumstances that inhibit success in the long term. As mentioned, gender experts asserted gender equality and gender mainstreaming must be implemented with long-term goals in mind in order to have an impact; however, policies and solutions typically only provided resources for short-term goals. Gender experts were able to name specific cases of their success, yet most seemed to falter when considering long-term impact. In fact, many were quite negative regarding the prospect of long-term success of gender expertise.