Download FEMINIST THEORY Governance—understood as the shift from

FEMINIST THEORY
Governance—understood as the shift from hierarchical and bureaucratic forms
of decision making to selforganization, networks, and negotiation—has
remained elusively immune to a comprehensive feminist analysis at local, state,
and international levels. Gendered theories of governance are absent in the
conventional literature and are neglected by feminist scholars. There are,
however, feminist critiques of theories of international relations, the state, and
public policy, all of which touch on governance, and they provide us with an
entry point into feminist theories of governance.
A feminist theory of governance will have two main components. The first will
be the perspective that informs the theory. Hence, a gendered approach to
governance may be liberal and focus on resolving inequalities perpetuated by
the private-public sphere dichotomy, it may be radical and seek gender equality
through institutional and ideological reform, or it may draw on interpretive
theory and view the state as a construction of discourses and practices so that
sexual domination is a contingent product of history and not immutable. The
second component will be its focus, drawn from the common themes and
concerns when gender and governance converge in the fields identified—
international relations, the state, and public policy.
Feminist International Relations
Feminist international relations is the field most removed from conventional
state-bound or local analyses of governance. It provides critiques of
globalization, development, and democratization and addresses the impact of
global governance institutions on women. A particular feature is an emphasis on
neoliberalism and the role of markets, which is understood as a gendered
discourse that has become the paradigm for global governance.
Feminist Theories of the State
Feminist state theory maintains that political processes reflect and reproduce
patriarchy, which will not change simply by increasing female representation in
political institutions. A fraternal contract, based on essentialist understandings of
gender, makes male political participation “natural,” and treats women as
incidental to the process of governing so that they are marginalized and
excluded from decision-making and agenda-setting processes. The token
representation of women in the state parallels the token representation of women
within gender-blind mainstream state theory. Women are very underrepresented
in state structures. The gendering of the state ensures that women’s interests are
articulated in “feminine” spheres such as welfare and education (opposed to the
state’s violent and repressive spheres).
There is little recognition that state actions reproduce gender relations and
identities through regulating marital relations, reproduction, wage discrimination
andmale violence, so that men are continually favored. However, although these
processes reflect and reproduce patriarchy, feminist theorists believe the
processes are open to change, rather than fixed. This notion underpins
poststructuralist approaches that assert feminist state theory rests on the illusion
that the state is inherently male. The state is not structurally given but, rather,
the product of erratic and disconnected discourses and the contingent success of
various groups in articulating interests and homogenizing claims. Politics is
therefore a set of contests about meanings rather than about objective interests.
The importance of discourses is also recognized by standard feminist state
theory: fraternal discourses construct the state on the assumption that the subject
is male, so rather than explicitly defending male interests, government is
conducted as if only men’s interests exist and in the belief that men are acting in
the interests of society as a whole.
Feminist Critiques of Public Policy
Feminist critiques of public policy are concerned with the role of women, the
fate of women’s issues in the policy process, and how policy affects women’s
interests.
From a liberal perspective, public policy is framed by male perceptions of the
public domain, and the boundaries of the public sphere are positioned so that
private problems that all women face in social and economic life are not viewed
as public issues. Areas that affect women more than men are badly resourced
and do not have a high profile in the public sphere. A more radical reading is
that the liberal public-private dichotomy conceals the fact that women are
subjugated by patriarchal and class relations with a universalist, egalitarian,
individualist gloss.
Gender mainstreaming is the push to institutionalize gender equity in all policy
areas at all levels of government, where national machineries or centralized
coordinating units ensure the design, implementation, monitoring, and
evaluation of all policies and programs so that inequalities are not propagated.
However, such initiatives are easily undermined by using public discourse to
portray gender mainstreaming as an elite agenda serving special interests, or a
rent-capturing agenda of people wanting to live off other people’s taxes. Hence,
neoliberal or rational choice discourses can sideline equity issues, demonstrating
the power of language to shape what can and cannot be seen.
Another concern is that successful mainstreaming allows the state to
commandeer the drive for gender justice so that it loses its edge. Gender policy
is merely symbolic policy, which is unsynchronized with other policies and will
result in only incremental gains at best. A gendered policy proposal will be
placed at the bottom of the political agenda, will be marginalized in the
formulation process, and thus will not attract adequate policy feedback: This is,
for example, why equal pay policies have not been integrated within general
employment policy. A radical interpretation is that equity policies are seen as a
threat and are actively undermined by male bureaucratic resistance, and the only
way female agendas can inform policy is by international feminist movements
challenging masculinist actions and discourse to transform the underpinning
ideologies of states and bureaucracies.
Most apposite to governance—understood as the shift from bureaucracies to
networks—is the work of Adam Tickell and Jamie Peck. They employed a
feminist lens to study the regendering of local governance in Manchester, United
Kingdom, and found the growth of non- or quasi-state bodies in the
decisionmaking process has naturalized business power and male power as the
legitimate conduit for effective local governance. At the national level, Janet
Newman assessed the impact of contracting out caring services on women and
work in the United Kingdom, and finds a reduction in women’s public-sector
jobs, whereas competition between service providers drives lower wages and
more part-time and insecure employment for women. This spiral reflects the
negative value placed on women’s labor as jobs such as social care work
represent a marketized version of traditional domestic tasks.
Toward a Feminist Theory of Governance
It follows that a feminist theory (or theories) of governance will variously be
concerned with the following:
1. How governance institutions and the contracting out of services affect women
2. The representation of women in political institutions, elites, and networks,
though recognizing a gendered division of labor, and marginalization and
exclusion from agenda setting and decision making
3. Gender mainstreaming of policy and successful routes to implementation
through the programming of the bureaucracy
4. The impact of masculinist discursive practices, particularly neoliberalism and
markets as a gendereddiscourse
5. Sexual domination as the outcome of contingent discourses and practices.
However, we must be aware of potential inconsistencies or contradictions within
such theories. They raise several questions. If there is reduced direct service
provision, how can gender accountability be enforced? Does a largely top-down
view of implementation neglect the discretion of bureaucrats and service
providers to frustrate gendered policy goals and overlook empowering women
as citizens in the policy process? Even when gender advocacy networks are in
operation, how can the contingency of governance outcomes square with driving
women’s interests?
As Newman observed, networks can disguise issues of equality and formalized
power, and rights are rendered less significant than patterns of influence in
interpersonal and interorganizational relationships.
—Claire Donovan
Further Readings and References
Barrett, M., & Phillips, A. (Eds.). (1992). Destabilizing theory: Contemporary feminist debates. Cambridge, UK:
Polity Press.
Newman, J. (2005). Regendering governance. In Remaking governance: Peoples, politics and the public sphere.
Bristol, UK: Policy Press.
Rai, S. M. (Ed.). (2003). Mainstreaming gender, democratizing the state? Institutional mechanisms for the
advancement of women. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Tickell, A., & Peck, J. (1996). The return of the Manchester men: Men’s words and men’s deeds in the remaking of
the local state. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 21, 595–616.
Waylen, G., & Rai, S. M. (Eds.). (2004). Gender, governance and globalisation [Special edition]. International
Feminist Journal of Politics, 6(4).