Gender (Plus) Mainstreaming and Political Science in New Zealand: Still a Work in Progress

The concept and practice of gender mainstreaming, while contested, has been taken up as a potentially transformative mechanism for the promotion of gender equality and in ‘making visible the gendered nature of assumptions, processes, and outcomes’ (Sylvia Walby). More recently, an intersectionality-based policy analysis framework asks scholars and policy makers go beyond ‘singular categories that are typically favoured in equity-driven analyses’ (Olena Hankivsky et al). It is unsurprising perhaps that the concept of gender (plus) mainstreaming might be considered transferable to teaching political science in New Zealand. The early influence of femocrats and the emergence of Women's and Gender Studies (WGS) departments in the 1970s and 1980s was not insignificant. Alongside this, the reinstatement of the Treaty of Waitangi (signed between Māori and the Crown in 1840) as one of New Zealand’s governing documents, and the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal to consider land claims and other grievances, stimulated a growth of research into Māori politics and governance. I raise the possibility of transformation because the discipline in New Zealand appears at first glance to be fluid and flexible and informed by an eclectic range of epistemological, theoretical, and methodological traditions. As such, the discipline in New Zealand might be seen to epitomise the ‘messy centre’ (albeit at the geographical margins of the political science teaching and research community), thereby presenting itself as potentially open to gender mainstreaming, intersectional analysis and integrating gender as a threshold concept. However, for now, evidence suggests an institutional ambivalence to women’s presence as faculty, to the inclusion of gendered content in the curriculum, and the embrace of intersectionality. So does the case of New Zealand reveal that the success of gender (plus) mainstreaming the discipline is dependent on certain conditions, in a way that is similar to gender mainstreaming in the bureaucracy? Does it require political and bureaucratic will, an activist classroom pedagogy, the revival of gender studies’ programs and the involvement of feminist entrepreneurs? And how can the discipline take account of intersectionality, indigeneity, and diversity in a country committed to biculturalism?