Equality in Recession? Transnational Developments

Abstract

Gendered inequality remains a domain of strong and multiple contestations. The effects of the financial crisis and new austerity regimes impact negatively on the political will to promote equality policy. The growing nationalism and authoritarianism in Europe raise new strong concerns about effective human rights protection. At the same time, major international organisations such as the World Bank, the UNDP and the OECD stress ever more strongly how gender equality is crucial for growth and sustainability; the new UN Sustainable Development Goals pinpoints gender equality as one of 17 major goals. In one sense, gender equality has become a new global norm paradigm. To offer but a glimpse of prevailing gender equality norms state action should provide protection against discrimination and harassment, violence and honour killings, trafficking in girls and women and gendered crimes in armed conflicts. State action should also secure access to law and gender mainstreaming of national laws and policies. Equality in decision-making, equality in employment and work-family balance are norms on the rise internationally. Intersectional discrimination and contextual vulnerability are growing concerns transnationally. Such concerns are based on new insights as to how gender combines with class, age, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality and race to produce ‘gender +’ inequality. What EU lingo calls ‘the six inequality strands’ have over the past two decades provided impetus to the development of regional law and the gradual build-up of a new equality architecture in Europe. Equality governance, however, combines universal normative ambitions with a great variety of law and policy translations. In the European context comparatively weak equality institution building has combined with strong austerity politics and growing populist nationalism to create new doubts about the actual normative power of EU institutions. In light of both austerity and political polarization, gender + equality scholars worry that European equality victories are standing on feet of clay. This Roundtable takes stock of contradictory tendencies in gender+ equality norm and policy development in ‘crisis times’. Four in depth analyses provide our points of departure, showcasing feminist scholarship not only to analyse but also to act for change. 1. The core meanings of equality; 2. Assessing research insights from international relations and comparative politics; 3. Looking at how the new ‘politics of survival’ may originate from experiences of being particularly hard hit by austerity politics and from ongoing and longstanding political minoritisation; 4. How different forms of opposition to gender equality can best be mapped, analysed and theorised The ECPG Gender and Politics Career Achievement Award honors an outstanding career of intellectual accomplishment, mentoring and service to the profession in the field of Gender and Politics in Europe. We are delighted to announce that our 2017 winner is Hege Skjeie, Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo, the first woman appointed to a full professorship in political science in Norway. Her career demonstrates both a commitment to scholarly advancement but also to public engagement, and she has taken an active role in advocating for gender equality. Hege's innovative research on ethnicity, diversity and intersectionality, human rights law and policy, and political representation, power and elite politics has advanced theoretical approaches and empirical knowledge of European gender and politics. ECPG is very pleased to host an invitation-only reception to honor Hege at the 2017 ECPR conference in Oslo, following the roundtable.