Thinking Big about ‘Gender Equality’ Policy in the Comparative Politics of Gender

This workshop calls on the growing group of scholars involved in large scale comparative analyses of (gender) equality policy issues in Europe and globally. Its major ambition is to shed light on the dynamics, determinants and impacts of policies that specifically promote gender equality. Why do we find gender equality policies? Why do they have a particular content and form in certain places and times? What are the theories that can explain their positive or negative impact? And which explanatory models actually work? Since the 1990s, “gender equality” or “feminist” policy has become an established policy field. In parallel, there has been a number of international research teams that have looked at different aspects of the policy puzzle related to gender equality (e.g. RNGS, MAGEEQ, QUING, FIIN, and FEMCIT). These projects have delivered a wide range of publications and insights within a specific approach and theoretical background. This workshop intends to use these large cross-national projects as a launching pad to push the scholarship on gender and policy forward to take on board new questions. We are interested in empirical cross-national papers on the complex puzzle of gender equality policy. They can focus on making new typologies, on cross-national similarities in dynamics and drivers both in terms of process and impact as well as on policies that have the potential to affect gender equality. These papers should relate to a broad range of social and political theory and ideally reflect upon how established cross-national projects inform their studies.