Making Gender Equality Happen ─ Knowledge, Change and Resistance in EU Gender Mainstreaming

Scholars have developed increasingly complex theorisations of the social construction of gender and the state’s role in it. Whilst existing research provides a nuanced picture of the multiple dynamics involved in the state’s production of gender inequality, we cannot yet fully account for the processes through which these dynamics are maintained. As a result, our understanding of how gendered change could be achieved is presently under-developed within existing literature.

In this book, Rosalind Cavaghan offers a detailed empirical perspective on the uses gender mainstreaming implementation as a model to explore these gaps in our understanding. In doing so she develops and applies a new methodological and theoretical perspective, Gender Knowledge Policy Process Analysis, which captures both the processes maintaining the status quo and those involved in change. Using data collected in two Directorates within Directorate General for Research (DG Research), Cavaghan is able to draw comparisons between a comparatively successful case of gender mainstreaming implementation and one where gender mainstreaming has had much less impact. This analysis provides practical insights into how gender mainstreaming does and does not work in large policy making and implementing organizations.

Tackling specific and well-documented theoretical puzzles presents readers with detailed insights into the mechanisms maintaining the state’s production of gender inequality and through which gendered change can be achieved as well as a methodology which can be applied to undertake similar analysis in other areas. This book will appeal to feminist scholars working in political science, interpretative policy analysis (IPA) scholars and those activists and policy makers interested in achieving change on the ground.

Rosalind Cavaghan is?Marie Curie Post Intra European Fellow at Radboud University.? Her research combines the broad themes of European governance, public policy/global political economy and gender.