Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society - current issue

Eastern Houses, Western Bricks? (Re)Constructing Gender Sensibilities in the European Union's Eastward Enlargement

Weiner, E. — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:56:19 PDT

In the European Union's (EU) fifth enlargement, the post-socialist states autocratically adopted a set of internationally derived, EU-mandated gender equality legal norms and institutional mechanisms as part of harmonization. Seeking legitimacy, supranational and national, state and civil society actors (particularly feminist nongovernmental organizations) readily conceded to this assumption, with little regard for the compatibility of gender sensibilities, East and West. While gender equality policy may achieve transnational currency, the motives and interests that enable its crossover can also hinder its functionality and imperil the wider political and economic aims that such policy seeks to promote.

Assessing Advocacy: European Transnational Women's Networks and Gender Mainstreaming

Lang, S. — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:56:19 PDT

This study investigates how European women's transnational advocacy networks (TANs) practice advocacy in regard to the gender mainstreaming strategy. Women's TANs face gender mainstreaming in several ways: They are considered to be hubs for organizing public dialogue on gender equality strategies in Europe. Moreover, employing mainstreaming tools has become a requirement for acquiring project funds from the European Union. Many TANs and their member groups thus work with mainstreaming. Finally, women's TANs are well positioned to observe and compare the implementation of mainstreaming through interaction with their national and regional members. The article builds on a series of interviews as well as on web-based data analysis to assess positions and advocacy of five European women's TANs in regard to gender mainstreaming. The findings suggest limited trust in and commitment to the strategy, but also limited advocacy. Women's TANs have developed a strategically distant position regarding gender mainstreaming. Lack of internal capacity, overall resource poverty, as well as prioritizing institutional advocacy, this study suggests, might contribute to weak politicization in regard to the gender mainstreaming strategy.

Authenticating Gender Policies through Sustained-Pressure: The Strategy Behind the Success of Turkish Feminists

Marshall, G. A. — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:56:19 PDT

The model of "boomerang effect" only partially explains the dynamics of the international and national activism of Turkish feminists. When their demands were not met by the state, feminists reached out to the United Nations and the European Union. However, rather than bypassing the Turkish state as it would be expected by the boomerang model, they kept pressuring the state. This political strategy, which I call sustained-pressure, helped feminists claim responsibility and success during and after the gender policy changes of the 2000s in Turkey. Establishing the indigenousness of the need for change eased ultra-nationalist opposition to external pressure.

Women and Science: What's the Problem?

Garforth, L., Kerr, A. — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:56:19 PDT

In recent years the issue of gender and SET (science, engineering, and technology) careers has become prominent in policies and debates in the UK. This paper explores the ways in which equalities solutions pertaining to women and science are locked into a narrow stock of taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of the problem. Drawing on Foucauldian models of the productive nature of discourse, we examine the proliferation of reports and initiatives which frame the issue and critically discuss their institutional consequences including gender audits and gender experts, and the ways in which raising the profile of women in science also involves reinscribing feminine difference.