Europeanization in the Norwegian Gender Equality Commission

Cathrine Holst et al. contributes a chapter on the Norwegian gender equality policy in the volume Towards Gendering Institutionalism, which is a part of the series Feminist Institutionalist Perspectives.

Cathrine Holst, Hege Skjeie, and Mari Teigen discuss the framing and reception of a set of proposals from a Norwegian public inquiry commission with a focus on the argumentative strategies that were employed to promote and resist policy change. In this analysis of the Gender+ Equality Commission’s presentation and embedding of these recommendations, the chapter's focus is on pinpointing argumentative strategies for institutional change and understanding the relationship between different change strategies and the development of a ‘Nordic’ versus a ‘European’ framing. What is the role of Europe in the commission’s argumentation, and how can it be interpreted?

About the book 

Gender has traditionally proven to be a ‘blind spot’ for new institutionalists. This book bring gender to the fore as a critical aspect of institutions and opens up new avenues to interrogate the dynamics of power and change. Casting its empirical lens on the EU, where institutional efforts to realize gender equality are quite pronounced, the book interrogates attempts to bring about more ‘gender just’ polities – supranationally, nationally, and more locally.

The book takes a ‘best case’ scenario – with explicit transformative aims to the social (gendered) order – in order to illuminate how institutions and their gendering, help and hinder institutional change. In doing so, it aims to: 1) consolidate and expand the theoretical ‘toolkit’ in terms of synergies between feminism and new institutionalism’s various strands; and 2) bring it to bear on the trajectory of Europe’s gender equality agenda towards better understanding the institutional and institutionalized challenges to redressing gender inequalities.

This volume is a part of the series Feminist Institutionalist Perspectives.

Full info 

Cathrine Holst, Hege Skjeie, and Mari Teigen
Chapter 6: Benevolent Contestations: Mainstreaming, Judicialization, and Europeanization in the Norwegian Gender+ Equality Debate 

In: Towards Gendering Institutionalism. Equality in Europe.
Heather MacRae and Elaine Weiner (eds) 

Rowman&Littlefield, 2017
ISBN 9781783489961

Published Aug. 9, 2017 1:50 PM - Last modified Feb. 3, 2022 6:29 AM