Feminist Approach to Discursive Critics of Gender Equality

The article illustrates how the quality of gender equality policies is constructed through policy debates in ways that are dependent on the different discursive, institutional and structural factors specific to various policy contexts. Discursive dynamics play an important role in shaping the meanings of gender.quality. The article discusses the relation between hegemonic discourses on gender equality policies and feminist presamptions and expectations. By discursive politics I mean the intentional or unintentional engaging of policy actors in conceptual disputes that result in meanings attributed to the terms and concepts employed in specific contexts. The consequences of these discursive processes are depoliticizing and degendering. The processes of bending gender equality to some other goal depoliticize the issue of gender equality, thus not representing gender equality as a political issue. One key element that is neutralized in the depoliticization is the 'dimension of conflict' that is relevant because it highlights power dynamics. Depoliticizing an issue tends to obscure its discordant relations, its hierarchy of power, which, if recognized, could have opened up possibilities for challenging that hierarchy. Depoliticization in gender equality is also found in the idea of degendering. This refers to how issues that were quite promisingly politicized and consciously gendered soon after became de-gendered - the gender dimension was reduced, neutralized, or abolished.