From promoting gender equality to managing gender equality policy

Abstract

This article analyzes the depoliticizing effects of managerial public governance reforms to gender equality policy. It combines two dimensions of depoliticization: the denial of gendered power relations and the denial of political interests, ideologies and related conflicts. The article focuses on a recent strategic governance reform in Finland, in order to pay attention to the context-specificity of governance reforms as well as how they are connected to ‘management fashions.’ The article shows how the implementation of strategic governance has intensified the ongoing shifts in the position, scope and practices of gender equality policy. As a result, gender equality policy has been sidelined and instrumentalized to serve other government policy objectives; the scope of gender equality policy has been narrowed, and the measures to promote gender equality have become increasingly aligned with the ideals and practices of managerial governance. The article argues that the two-dimensional process of depoliticization explains a ‘quiet backlash’ of gender equality policy in a context of relatively strong gender equality policy and institutions. Such backlash does not involve an open conflict between gender equality policy and conservative and/or anti-gender policies, but is represented as a technical rather than a political shift.