Mainstreaming Politics: Gendering Practices and Feminist Theory
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Cover photo by Carol Bacchi, stretched across the inside cover spread in the printed edition Mainstreaming politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory edited by CAROL BACCHI & JOAN EVELINE Mainstreaming politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory edited by CAROL BACCHI & JOAN EVELINE Published in adelaide by University of Adelaide Press Barr Smith Library The University of Adelaide South Australia 5005 [email protected] www.adelaide.edu.au/press The University of Adelaide Press publishes externally refereed scholarly books by staff of the Uni- versity of Adelaide. It aims to maximise the accessibility to its best research by publishing works through the internet as free downloads and as high quality printed volumes on demand. Electronic index: this book is available from the website as a down-loadable PDF with fully search- able text. Please use the electronic version to complement the index. ____________________________________________________________________________ © 2010 Carol Bacchi, Joan Eveline and the contributors This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criti- cism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced, stored in a re- trieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission. Address all inquiries to the Director at the above address. ________________________________________________________________ Subject Keywords Gender mainstreaming - organizational sociology - sex discrimination against women - women’s rights - Women:social conditions - Feminist theory For the full Cataloguing-in-Publication data please contact National Library of Australia: [email protected] ISBN 978-0-9806723-8-1 (electronic) ISBN 978-0-9806723-9-8 (paperback) Book design: Céline Lawrence Cover design: Fiona Cameron Cover photo: Carol Bacchi Paperback printed by Griffin Press, South Australia To Joan Contents Preface ix Personal reflection xi Publisher’s note xiii List of authors and project personnel xv Acknowledgements xvii Introduction 1 1 Gender/ing impact assessment: Can it be made to work? 17 CAROL BACCHI 2 Mainstreaming and neoliberalism: A contested relationship 39 CAROL BACCHI AND JOAN EVELINE 3 Gender analysis and social change: Testing the water 61 CAROL BACCHI, JOAN EVELINE, JENNIFER BINNS, CATHERINE MACKENZIE AND SUSAN HARWOOD 4 What are we mainstreaming when we mainstream gender? 87 JOAN EVELINE AND CAROL BACCHI 5 Approaches to gender mainstreaming: What’s the problem represented to be? 111 CAROL BACCHI AND JOAN EVELINE 6 Power, resistance and reflexive practice 139 JOAN EVELINE AND CAROL BACCHI 7 Gender mainstreaming: The answer to the gender pay gap? 163 JOAN EVELINE AND PATRICIA TODD 8 Gender analysis and community participation: The oler of women’s policy units 191 KATY OSBORNE, CAROL BACCHI AND CATHERINE MACKENZIE 9 The invisibility of gendered power relations in domestic violence policy 215 KAREN VINCENT AND JOAN EVELINE 10 Gender mainstreaming versus diversity mainstreaming: Methodology as emancipatory politics 237 JOAN EVELINE, CAROL BACCHI AND JENNIFER BINNS 11 University-public sector research collaboration: Mine the space, never mind the gap 263 CATHERINE MACKENZIE AND CAROL BACCHI 12 Obeying organisational ‘rules of relevance’: Gender analysis of policy 283 JOAN EVELINE AND CAROL BACCHI 13 Gender mainstreaming or diversity mainstreaming? The politics of doing’‘ 311 CAROL BACCHI AND JOAN EVELINE Conclusion A politics of movement 335 CAROL BACCHI AND JOAN EVELINE Author Index 345 General Index 349 Preface We decided to produce this compilation of articles, in the main published elsewhere, because we thought it worthwhile to reflect on developments in our thinking in connection with a large research project on gender analysis of policy. Over four years, as laid out in more detail in the Introduction, we were the Chief Investigators for an ARC-funded Linkage grant project to assist in the design of gender analysis procedures for the South Australian and Western Australian public sectors. In the lead-up to and over the course of the project (referred to as the Gender Analysis Project or GAP) we collaborated closely in the production of papers which became articles that traced the ‘learnings’ generated by the project. We are grateful to the various journal publishers for the opportunity to reprint these articles. Previously published articles are listed at the end of this preface. Because the published articles necessarily include essential background information, there will inevitably be some repetition. Some themes also reappear in several chapters. We hope that this repetition does not prove onerous to readers. All articles were approved for publication by the relevant industry partners. Reviewing the published material, and again in close collaboration, we decided that there was something to be learned from examining the themes developed in these articles and from considering how our specific theoretical backgrounds shaped these themes. In the process of undertaking this task we realised that some of the underlying theoretical premises that grounded these analyses might well be less visible to readers than to us. Hence we took the opportunity, through this book, to lay out more clearly the precepts undergirding our joint reflections on gender analysis procedures. We accomplish this objective in two ways. Each previously published article has a new, co-authored introduction, explaining its place in the overall project and the thinking that informed its production – obviating the need for chapter summaries in the Introduction. In addition, some new chapters have been added to ensure that underlying theoretical premises are spelt out in an accessible manner. In Chapter 5 we explain more fully the notion of policies as productive practices, ix Mainstreaming politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory while in Chapter 6 we outline the premises of poststructural organisation studies. A new chapter – Chapter 11 – was added to address the contours and possibilities of university-public sector collaborations, such as the one in which we were engaged. The book then is a compilation of a different sort. It provides a mapping of premises and concepts in an effort to make the analysis it offers more meaningful and more useful. It is also an exploration of theory generation. As the Introduction explains in more detail, we come from different disciplinary backgrounds – Carol Bacchi from public policy and Joan Eveline from organisational studies – while both share a poststructural theoretical orientation. Our collaborative interactions are reflected both in the shape of the project and in the analyses which emerged. Collaborative research is not unusual. However, it is unusual for those involved in such research to reflect upon the nature and outcomes of that collaboration. The book is innovative in undertaking this task. Carol Bacchi and Joan Eveline x Personal reflection Due to Joan’s illness and subsequent death in July 2009 I performed the final revisions on the new sections of the manuscript. This was necessary but difficult. Our method of writing always involved checking by the other person, but this was no longer possible. It is important to mention this situation because, as mentioned above, Joan and I came from different fields and had different emphases in our work. At times we did not always exactly agree on some point of the argument or, perhaps more precisely, we could not always quite see how the other person’s perspective produced different emphases. At this level the book can be seen as a kind of dialogue, which is perhaps the nature of collaboration. This dialogue is clearest in Chapters 5 and 6. Joan drafted Chapter 6 as a ‘response’ to Chapter 5, highlighting both the power effects of the WPR approach, introduced in that chapter, and a tendency she saw in the approach to portray subjects as (solely) produced in discourse. Subsequently I returned to Chapter 5 to clarify certain points in response to Joan’s reflections. Joan saw the changes and approved. Nevertheless, we both agreed that the exchange in these chapters on the ‘power effects’ of our work remained useful. Indeed, as becomes clear in the book, the project left Joan and I concerned about those effects and humbled by our recognition of them. I explain all this because it doesn’t feel quite right for me to have ‘the last word’. I hope any final changes I made to the text – usually at the prompting of invited readers – are in tune with Joan’s vision. At any rate I take heart in the fact that the whole message of the book is that ‘last’ words, while necessary, still remain provisional. I write in this spirit. Carol Bacchi xi Publisher’s note The publisher and authors are grateful for permission to reproduce the following articles: Bacchi, C. 2004. ‘Gender/ing impact assessment: Can it be made to work?’ Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies 9 (2): 93-111. Bacchi, C. and Eveline, J. 2003. ‘Mainstreaming and neoliberalism: A contested relationship’, Policy & Society: Journal of Public, Foreign and Global Policy 22 (2): 119-143. Bacchi, C. and Eveline, J. 2009. ‘Gender mainstreaming or diversity mainstreaming? The politics of “doing”’, NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 17(1): 3-18. See http://www.informaworld.com Bacchi, C., Eveline, J., Binns, J., Mackenzie, C. and Harwood, S. 2005. ‘Gender analysis and social change: Testing the water’, Policy and Society. Special issue: Reinventing gender equality and the political, Bacchi, C. and Schofield, T. (eds) 24 (4): 45-68. Eveline, J. and Bacchi, C.