Although the disappointing implementation outcomes of gender mainstreaming (GM) have been well documented, our understanding of how a policy like GM could actually work and what kind of change it can achieve remains under theorised (Mackey et al 2010, Mazey 20002, Meier and Celis 2010, Zalewski 2010). This paper argues that methodological difficulties involved in operationalising complex theories of the construction of gender as a locally constructed process (Acker 1990, Beckwith 2005, Connel 2006) constitute one of the barriers to theorising how gendered change can be achieved in the state and organisations, and presents a methodology drawing on IPA (interpretative policy analysis) (Yanow 1993, Wagenaar et al 2003) and the sociology of knowledge (SK) (Latour and Callon 1981, Law 1986, Young and Scherrer 2010, which tackles this barrier.
Drawing on findings from a recently completed case study of GM implementation in DG Research, the arm of the European Commission charged with overseeing science and research policy, the paper uses this methodology to capture and describe the subtle processes of change which GM can bring about.
The paper argues that these methods enable us to examine the micro processes through which competing perceptions of policy problems are marginalised or empowered, focusing in particular on how organisational action is coordinated around gender blind/gender sensitive conceptions of policy problems, after initial processes of ‘official’ policy development. These methods thus enable us to look more deeply at the ‘non implementation’ problems, which GM often confronts and afford us analytical purchase on the subtle shifts within organisations, which reduce the dominance of gender blind policy conceptions, in turn affecting the opportunities for ‘feminist’ actors to direct state/organisational resources to the reduction of gender inequality.
