Women’s business organisations as policy actors: the case of the UK

Women’s business organisations have been very little studied in political science. Yet they have been important actors in the history of workplace gender equality policies (such as equal pay campaigns) alongside trade unions and feminist NGOs, and have become increasingly important – indeed, arguably central – to policymaking on gender equality in the workplace, as the political economy of leading nations has tilted towards neoliberalism. This paper examines the British case, based on qualitative documentary analysis. It focuses on the forms of gender knowledge articulated by women’s business organisations with close links to government, and asks how the problem of gender equality is framed by such organisations, as well as what is missing from policy frames. The paper tracks the growing institutionalisation of women’s business organisations as policy actors in the British context, and maps them onto other relevant institutions within the policy space. It also maps the main individual actors within these organisations to the political economy of policymaking in the UK: which sectors and organisations are represented? Institutionalist theory is used to help explain the prevalence of certain sectors and organisations, and their influence on policy in the contemporary British political economy. Schematically, forms of women’s business organisations’ gender knowledge are compared to other forms of gender knowledge, trade union and feminist NGO, to identify commonalities and differences. Based on this comparative analysis, the paper discusses Sarah Stoller’s (2023) argument that business feminism has been influential not only in shaping policy agendas and outputs but reshaping the discursive representation of gender equality policy in wider society (including by women’s campaign organisations), at least in the context of the UK’s liberal regime and increasingly neoliberalised policy setting.