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Gender mainstreaming in the United Kingdom: Current issues and future challenges

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British Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

Gender mainstreaming (GM) has been hailed as a ‘potentially revolutionary concept’ a significant policy innovation, and even a paradigm shift for thinking about gender equality in policymaking processes (Rees). Despite the rhetoric about GM, there are growing concerns about its ability to realize its perceived potential. Increasingly calls are being made to evaluate GM to better understand the complexity of factors inhibiting or leading to its promotion and operationalization. In some jurisdictions, the need to move from GM to equality or diversity mainstreaming has been recognized and alternative frameworks to GM are in their nascent stages of conceptualization and implementation. The purpose of this article is to examine GM in the UK context, especially in light of recent developments in equality law and policy. In so doing, the article will present data from 30 qualitative interviews conducted between 2007 and 2008 with feminist academics, representatives from women's/equality-seeking organizations and policy decision-makers across the United Kingdom, including the devolved states. Together with textual analyses of key government documents and reports, the article seeks to illuminate some of the current tensions between gender and diversity within equality policy and to consider what their implications may be for the future of GM.

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Notes

  1. Although the focus of this article is GM at its evolution at a UK level, it is also the official approach to gender equality policy in the devolved nations of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (Rees, 2002, p. 45), though important contrasts can be made to GM at the national level. First, all three have statutory equality measures embedded in their devolved constitutional structures. Second, particularly in Northern Ireland and Scotland, a strong equality-seeking civil society in the context of social movements for devolution have led to a more ‘participatory’ model of GM. Third, in the devolved regions there is a longer history of GM being embedded within a wider equality agenda; for example an Equality Unit and Equality Policy Unit (counterparts to the then Women's Unit in Whitehall) were established in the Scottish and Welsh Executives in 1999, and the statutory equality duty in Northern Ireland covers nine equality grounds including gender.

  2. A unified commission was announced before mention of an accompanying unified equality act. A unified act was subsequently lobbied for by the existing commissions and other equality professionals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Critical Studies in Gender and Health, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

    Olena Hankivsky & Ashlee Christoffersen

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  1. Olena Hankivsky
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  2. Ashlee Christoffersen
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Correspondence to Olena Hankivsky.

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Hankivsky, O., Christoffersen, A. Gender mainstreaming in the United Kingdom: Current issues and future challenges. Br Polit 6, 30–51 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2011.1

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