WUNRN
CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE - HOW
DO WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS MAKE A DIFFERENCE:
A FRAMEWORK FOR THE COMPARATIVE
ANALYSIS OF WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS POLICY AGENCY
Direct Link to Full 26-Page 2013
Report:
For
decades, women’s movements have been the focus of an established and growing
body of comparative political research in the context of Western postindustrial
democracies. However, relatively little has been published so far about the
agency of women's movements in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region
since the collapse of the communist systems.
This paper was written to be presented at the the 3rd European Conference on
Gender and Politics (ECPG). It is an extensive literature on women’s movements
and the situation of women in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), which has
emerged since the 1990s. The author claims that previous research on this topic
has not been interested in the policy impact as a theoretical and analytical
concept; and finds that this concept still needs to be defined in order to draw
meaningful conclusions about how influential women’s movements have been in the
transitioning CEE region. Synthesising the literature on the outcomes of social
and women’s movements and the theories of public policy making, this paper
develops an analytical framework which allows for examining the similarities
and differences between women’s movements' agency and impact on gender policy
development in different CEE countries. The framework consists of four major
components:
1. It offers an operational definition of women’s movements that can be used
for comparative assessment of women´s movements policy impact in CEE countries.
2. It argues that policy impact of women´s movements can concern some or all of
the steps in the policy process, namely agenda setting, specification of
alternatives, enactment of policies, and implementation of policies.
3. It argues that future studies analysing women’s agency should broaden the
scope of policies that are included in different studies.
4. It offers a methodological design that addresses the problem of causality:
how to establish a causal link between a women’s movements’ agency and an
observed policy change?
While this paper focuses on one important area of impact, namely public policy,
the author recognises that women´s movements can have impact in other areas of
social life as well, e.g. cultural and social relations. Gains in one arena may
either help or hinder attempts to make gains in another. Success within the
political arena can influence changes in both the cultural and social arenas.
For example, when groups gain acceptance, or are seen as legitimate actors
within the political arena, they increase their chances of creating a
collective identity; which is recognised both by those within, as well as
outside of, the movement. Future studies should develop analytical frameworks
that view the women’s movement’s impact as three overlapping arenas: policy,
culture and social relations.
_________________________________________________