Gender governance is complex, flexible, dynamic, informal, and always changing. Gender governance and the policy-making process itself include different levels of structures (basically, institutional arrangements, legislation, and policy instruments) that function as a framework for gender work, as well as organised actors (including bodies, agencies, committees, informal groups, and networks), ‘femocrats’, academics, organisations such as the EWL or WIDE, and policy-makers within EU institutions (Commission officials who are not necessarily ‘femocrats’).
80 Interview with administrator working with gender issues at DG Development, May 2008.
As gender governance is flexible and changing, those who occupy these positions may move from one to another: academics who participate in networks of experts within the Commission may later be in an organisation such as the EWL and vice versa (Woodward 2003). Policy instruments and mechanisms function as a framework within which gender work is done.
Knowledge and information play a central role in gender governance, while power and conflict are constitutive of its dynamics.
There is a certain bureaucratic overlap among these institutions and actors when it comes to gender governance; I try to express this through figure 2 below. The boundaries between roles and functions of different EU policy-making institutions are not plainly defined. This overlapping occurs not only among institutions such as the EC, the EP, and the ECJ but especially among different groups, bodies, agencies, or lobbies such as the EIGE and the EWL.
However, even if actors and institutions overlap in the governance of gender, all these actors, institutions, and bodies are not at the same level in terms of influence, and relations of power/authority exist among them. They do not all have the same power to define the ‘problem’ of gender (in)equality or the same degree of influence in policy formulation or law enforcement. As stated at the beginning of this chapter, the EC is the ‘main actor’ in gender governance. And it is the main actor because it is the EC that produces the Roadmap, coordinating and evaluating its implementation. This applies, however, to the policy strategy of gender mainstreaming. When it comes to equal treatment legislation, it is the ECJ that concentrates most regulatory power by means of law enforcement. In fact, the two institutions govern different objects, i.e. gender mainstreaming and equal treatment legislation, respectively (see the section on governance and gender governance above).
Are some actors more influential than others when it comes specifically to the strategy of gender mainstreaming? In the case of the mainstreaming strategy, the EC certainly has the most important role. The EC has power over the definition of the strategy of gender mainstreaming. But even within the EC, not all DGs have the same kind of role and degree of influence; DG Employment coordinates, monitors, and evaluates the Roadmap (and therefore the strategy of gender mainstreaming) throughout the EC. And at the EC level there are other actors, such as the Inter-Service Group on Gender Equality, which also coordinates the gender mainstreaming strategy;
the other DGs; the Advisory Committee; BEPA; Groups of Experts within specific issue areas; and other informal networks. In addition, the EWL, WIDE, EIGE, and the FEMM Committee at the EP also play influential roles, in particular as producers of knowledge. This may also be an empirical question, however, because the different levels of influence may depend on
the specific policy area at issue. For instance, WIDE has a certain degree of influence in the development policy area, and it may have none in connection with other policy areas. Hence, it is difficult to determine which of these actors is more influential in the governance process, for each of these actors has a different role (even though these roles may overlap), and the process of policy formulation always entails power struggles and negotiations in which positions are (re)defined.
In any case, how the bureaucratic overlapping occurs is an empirical question and, as such, it will be taken up as I present the analysis of the material. I would hypothesise that the bureaucratic overlapping may be related both to the question of gender mainstreaming versus a focus on women (or specific actions): either mainstreaming is something for which all actors are responsible or there should be specific units responsible for women’s issues;
and to the apparent failure of gender mainstreaming: by creating new units, EU actors in the gender governance system intend to solve flaws in gender mainstreaming (the creation of the EIGE can be seen in this light). The question, in sum, would be: How do these actors relate/overlap/complement each other at the level of practice of policy formulation in the context of the gender mainstreaming strategy, and how does this overlapping or complementarity influence different discourses of gender equality?
Figure 2: Actors in gender governance81
81 Figure 2 summarises the actors taking part in gender governance at the EU level, including the relationships among actors and structures (relations of power/authority).
Commission
Parliament (Citizens)
DGs
DG Employment
DG Development Inter-Service
Group Advisory Committee
DG JFS
Roadmap
Council of the European Union (National Governments/MSs)
European Institute for Gender Equality
European Women’s Lobby
Council of Europe
Committe of the Regions WIDE
IOs
Work Programmes Proposes legislation and budget to the Council and the EP
Supervises Co-decision
Appoints
Figure 3: Gender governance system82
EU Gender Governance System
Aim of gender governance system → Equality between women and men (gender equality as a core EU value)
Problem definition / Solution83
Problem definition Inequality between women and men.
Gender inequality is caused by male-centred systems and structures. Institutions and structures constitute the root of individual and group disadvantage.
Solution (strategies) Dual-track approach: Transform the gender
hierarchy by incorporating a gender perspective into all systems and structures, policies, programmes, processes, and projects, and into ways of seeing and doing and into cultures and their organisations (gender mainstreaming). Also and programmes at some DGs). At third level:
82 Based partly on the classification by Burns and Stöhr (2010), Figure 3 summarises the main components of the gender governance system.
83 The analysis of the problem representations is presented throughout the thesis, including the examination of the policy areas migration and development cooperation. Within the limits of this chapter there is only a general reference to this aspect (presented in this table) while the organisational dimension of governance is dealt with.
84 The organisational dimension also includes the relationships among actors and structures (relations of power/authority) and the internal dynamics of decision-making, including deliberation and conflicts over knowledge (see figure 2).
gender coordinators at most DGs.
Gender experts acting at all three levels – networks of specialists, experts in agencies (EIGE), social scientists, knowledge produced by EWL and NGOs as well as WIDE in the case of development.
Frameworks, structures, instruments, and mechanisms at work
Institutional arrangements, administrative rules, policy mechanisms and instruments, legislation, white papers, green papers – the Roadmap is the main structure in the governing of gender, period 2005–2010; also other Commission Communications, programmes, and instruments such as the Work Programmes, gender manuals, benchmarking, best practices, awareness raising activities, and reports such as the yearly Reports on Gender Equality.