This book breaks new ground in gender and politics research by studying the multiple ways in which gender and intersectional equalities shape and are shaped by social partners representing employers and employees in Europe, as well as the relationships between those social partners. Little critical attention has been paid to these organizations, yet, as this volume illustrates, social partners are important actors in relation to gender and other inequalities at the level of both individual European countries and the European Union. The chapters in this volume explore the impact of social partners on (in)equalities in a variety of 21st-century political contexts, taking into account phenomena such as neoliberalisation, austerity, and the COVID-19 crisis. This volume adds a crucial dimension to studies on gender inequalities in the labour market, contributing to research on issues such as domestic work, the gender pay gap, and the persistent undervaluation of women’s labour and feminized reproductive labour, in particular care work. It also represents a significant contribution to the literature on gender equality policy. The book’s focus on social partners provides important insights that help to explain the persistence of gender inequalities and the difficulties of adopting and implementing policies to combat them. This volume should appeal to students and researchers of gender studies, politics, European politics, employment relations, and international relations, as well as to policymakers engaged in addressing gender inequalities in the labour market.

This book explores the discursive constructions of gender equality and the implications of these understandings in a broad range of policy fields. Using gender equality as a prime example, a number of internationally renowned scholars offer a new vocabulary to identify and study processes of the reduction, amplification, shifting or freezing of meaning. The main aim of the book is to understand the dynamics and to reflect on the consequences of such discursive politics in recent policy making on gender equality. It explores both the potential opportunities that are opened up for the promotion of equality through discursive politics, and the limitations they impose. Distinctive features of the volume include: chapters covering a range of case studies in Europe, the USA, and the Asia region, tackling contemporary political debates on equality new insights of relevance to public policy practices such as gender mainstreaming, with theorizing on intersecting inequalities The Discursive Politics of Gender Equality will be of interest to students and scholars, of political science, public policy, comparative politics, gender and women studies.

Political interventions in pursuit of gender equality are currently high on the political agenda, but the transformative potential of women's policy agencies, gender quotas and gender mainstreaming is frequently compromised by the demands of neo-liberal governance on the one hand and essentialist assertions of group identity on the other. This book explores the potential of these strategies arguing that they need to be framed by considerations of democratic justice rather than technocratic utility and complex diversity rather than sexual difference.

After decades of steady progress in terms of gender and sexual rights, several parts of Europe are facing new waves of resistance to a so-called ‘gender ideology’ or ‘gender theory’. Opposition to progressive gender equality is manifested in challenges to marriage equality, abortion, reproductive technologies, gender mainstreaming, sex education, sexual liberalism, transgender rights, antidiscrimination policies and even to the notion of gender itself. This book examines how an academic concept of gender, when translated by religious organizations such as the Roman Catholic Church, can become a mobilizing tool for, and the target of, social movements. How can we explain religious discourses about sex difference turning intro massive street demonstrations? How do forms of organization and protest travel across borders? Who are the actors behind these movements? This collection is a transnational and comparative attempt to better understand anti-gender mobilizations in Europe. It focuses on national manifestations in eleven European countries, including Russia, from massive street protests to forms of resistance such as email bombarding and street vigils. It examines the intersection of religious politics with rising populism and nationalistic anxieties in contemporary Europe.

This comprehensive collection brings together key academics, activists and practitioners to review the changing politics of the 'project' of gender equality. It gives account of the evolution of gender equality policies and practice at different levels of governance in Britain over the past three decades. Thinking and work around equal opportunities have been fundamentally shaped by changing political conditions. The contributors review past policies and practices before moving on to explore the opportunities and challenges for the future.

“Sometimes ideas change the world. This astonishing, miraculous, shattering, inspiring book captures the origins and the arc of the movement for sex equality. It’s a book whose time has come—always, but perhaps now more than ever.” —Cass Sunstein, coauthor of Nudge Under certain conditions, small simple actions can produce large and complex “butterfly effects.” Butterfly Politics shows how Catharine A. MacKinnon turned discrimination law into an effective tool against sexual abuse—grounding and predicting the worldwide #MeToo movement—and proposes concrete steps that could have further butterfly effects on women’s rights. Thirty years after she won the U.S. Supreme Court case establishing sexual harassment as illegal, this timely collection of her previously unpublished interventions on consent, rape, and the politics of gender equality captures in action the creative and transformative activism of an icon. “MacKinnon adapts a concept from chaos theory in which the tiny motion of a butterfly’s wings can trigger a tornado half a world away. Under the right conditions, she posits, small actions can produce major social transformations.” —New York Times “MacKinnon [is] radical, passionate, incorruptible and a beautiful literary stylist... Butterfly Politics is a devastating salvo fired in the gender wars... This book has a single overriding aim: to effect global change in the pursuit of equality.” —The Australian “Sexual Harassment of Working Women was a revelation. It showed how this anti-discrimination law—Title VII—could be used as a tool... It was the beginning of a field that didn’t exist until then.” —U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

This book offers an innovative rethinking of policy approaches to 'gender equality' and of the process of social change. It brings several new chapters together with a series of previously published articles to reflect on these topics. A particular focus is gender mainstreaming, a relatively recent development in equality policy in many industrialised and some industrialising countries, as well as in large international organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the International Labour Organization. The book draws upon poststructuralist organisation and policy theory to argue that it is impossible to 'script' reform initiatives such as gender mainstreaming. As an alternative it recommends thinking about such policy developments as fields of contestation, shaped by on-the-ground political deliberations and practices, including the discursive practices that produce specific ways of understanding the 'problem' of 'gender inequality'. In addition to the new chapters the editors Bacchi and Eveline produce brief introductions for each chapter, tracing the development of their ideas over four years. Through these commentaries the book provides exciting insights into the complex processes of collaboration and theory generation. Mainstreaming Politics is a rich resource for both practitioners in the field and for theorists. In particular it will appeal to those interested in public policy, public administration, organisation studies, sociology, comparative politics and international studies.