Institutionalizing Gender Equality: Historical and Global Perspectives

Forty years have passed since the first UN-organized World Conference on Women in Mexico City in 1975. In that time, women’s rights, and later gender equality, have become firmly established as an important area of global politics and human rights. What shape have these processes taken in different parts of the world? How do global and internationally designed institutions adapt to local cultural, religious, political, and economic contexts? What are the problems and contradictions embedded in this process when viewed from a global perspective? What effects do grassroots, local, and national actors have on transnational institutions? In answering the questions, the book draws on historical and global perspectives, beginning in the 1960s, an important moment for internationalization during the Cold War, and looking to a global selection of case studies. Providing a series of “snapshots” of historical and contemporary global gender equality politics, the chapters allow for an examination of how local, national, and transnational actors have interacted in ways that affect the dissemination of gender equality institutions, both formal and informal. The case studies demonstrate the relationship between the supranational, regional, national, and sub-national or “local.” They explore the power dynamics, interactions, and mutually constituting nature of two analytic levels of organizations and actors involved in the institutionalization of gender equality–the transnational level as well as the level of activity within specific national political systems (as represented by states, grassroots organizations, and other sub-national actors). The findings reveal that the institutionalization of gender equality is dependent on national and local context, the potential for interactions between gender equality policies and other state agendas, the depth of informal institutions, and the degree to which a given state is integrated into the norms of the international system.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Internationalization, Institutionalization, and Glocalization: Gender Equality as Process, Yulia Gradskova and Sara Sanders Part I: Cold War Gender Equality Politics in a Global Framework Chapter 2: Global Ideas in Local Media: Negotiating the Ideas of Gender Equality in a Finnish Women’s Magazine—The Case of Anna, 1965-1970, Heidi Kurvinen Chapter 3: Article 119: A Practical Tool for Stewardesses to Obtain Equal Pay in the European Community (Belgium, 1968-1980), Vanessa D‘Hooghe Chapter 4: The National Union of Mexican Women and Maternalist Alternatives in Global Women’s Politics, Sara Sanders Part II: The Multiple Contexts of Gender Equality Chapter 5: Gender Equality Politics in Ageing Welfare Societies: the Case of the European Union, Heike Kahlert Chapter 6: Women’s Resource Centres: A Democratic Innovation for Gendered Equal Growth?, Malin Lindberg Chapter 7. Gender Equality Incorporated?: Coca-Cola’s and Wal-Mart’s Initiatives for Female Empowerment in Mexico, Sofie Tornhill Part III: Transfer and Legitimacy in the Institutionalization of Gender Equality Chapter 8: Voicing Roma Women: Intersectional Marginalities and Social Entrepreneurship of a Roma Women’s NGO in Hungary, Ildikó Asztalos Morell Chapter 9: (Non)Engendering Human Rights Protection Institutions in Regions of Russia, Tatiana Barandova Chapter 10: Global Strategies and Local Implementations: Gender Quotas in South Korea and Taiwan, Chang-Ling Huang Chapter 11: Gender Equality in Kazakhstan and the Role of International Actors in its Institutionalization, Svetlana Shakirova Part IV: Gender Equality at Risk? Chapter 12: “This Law is Simply a Blind Copy of the Most Radical Feminist Laws of the Northern Europe”: Gender Equality (Non)Institutionalization—An Example of Nordic Cooperation with Northwest Russia, Yulia Gradskova Chapter 13: Challenging Global Gender Politics: Egypt’s Islamist Experience, An Van Raemdonck

About the Author :
Yulia Gradskova is associate professor at the Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University. Sara Sanders is senior lecturer in the Departments of History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at Grinnell College.

Review :
This is a timely and fascinating book. The thirteen chapters, generally very well written and documented, critically examine historical and contemporary dimensions of ‘gender equality’ and its institutionalization from the 1960s through the 2010s. Institutionalizing Gender Equality enhances our understanding of global gender equality politics in the contexts of the Cold War, neoliberalism, nationalism, and religious fundamentalism. Highly recommended. Bringing fresh eyes to both familiar and hitherto marginalized cases, this eclectic, multidisciplinary, and international collection provides valuable new insights into the institutionalization of gender equality policies and norms.