Suchergebnisse

Understanding the Swedish gender equality model - possibilities and limits -- Frame analysis as a new approach for studying feminist institutional change -- Tracing ideational changes concerning prostitution -- The 1992 battle of the committees as a critical juncture -- Proponents, resistance, and strategies

En 2007, un fonds controversé pour l'égalité des sexes a été introduit dans les négociations collectives en Suède afin de réduire l'écart de rémunération entre les hommes et les femmes. Le présent article explore le conflit suscité par ce fonds pour mettre en lumière les raisons pour lesquelles il était si controversé. Il vise également à approfondir les connaissances concernant la possibilité d'introduire une perspective intersectionnelle dans le programme de négociation, qui tienne compte à la fois du genre et de la classe. Les résultats empiriques démontrent que la controverse résidait dans des différences dans la façon de conceptualiser les inégalités sur le marché du travail. Sur le plan théorique, l'article illustre les difficultés liées à l'application pratique d'une perspective intersectionnelle.

Recent work in the field of feminist institutionalism has made important progress in furthering our understanding of gendered institutional change. I argue that gradual ideational changes play an essential role in processes of gendered institutional change, and that examining the interaction between ideas and gendered institutions is of great importance for gaining a better understanding of processes of this type. This article revisits an empirical study of gendered institutional change in Swedish prostitution policy in the effort to specify two idea-based mechanisms that are conducive to gendered change, namely, consensus concerning the problem and gendering of the problem.

Previous research has shown that politics is a highly gendered field and that male and female decision-makers hold different values and engage with different issues as well. Feminist institutionalism has provided important insights concerning how a given context creates the conditions for political behavior and outcomes in respect to gender. While both formal and informal institutions have been of interest in this field of research, less attention has been directed to the perceptions actors have of the institutional context. The starting point of this article is the constructivist notion that actors' behavior is mediated by their perceptions of the context, and it proposes that frame of meaning can be fruitfully used as an analytical concept for capturing gendered perceptions. The aim of the article is twofold. The first is to develop the notion of gendered frame of meaning as an analytical concept. The second is to investigate the strategies used by female MPs in the case of Swedish prostitution policy in order to show how gendered frames of meaning guided their strategic choices. The added value of this approach is that it furthers our understanding of how the institutional context influences actors' behavior on the micro-level.

A constructivist understanding of policy production as a struggle of meaning in which ideas and actors interact is the point of departure of this thesis. Prostitution policy is a salient example of such a struggle and is thus a suitable case for exploring the role of ideas in politics. The purpose of the thesis is threefold: to explain the process preceding the Swedish ban on the purchase of sexual services in 1998, to understand the dynamics in gendered policy and to develop a framework for policy analysis. In the first part of the thesis a dynamic model of frame analysis is developed consisting of three dimensions to analyze: the politically relevant ideas in terms of policy frames (in this case related to gender and power); ideas as restricting and facilitating for actors; actors' framing strategies and the consequences of strategic framing in terms of risks and limitations. This comprehensive and dynamic model of frame analysis fills a gap in previous policy research. In the second part of the thesis the dynamic frame analysis is applied to explain Swedish prostitution policy. The empirical analysis contains a study of the policy process preceding the ban of 1998, a micro study of the actors' involvement at a critical juncture and an analysis of the actors' strategic framing. The thesis concludes that the process was path dependent in the sense that the institutionalization of different ideas, at different points of time, was important for the final outcome. However, the thesis also concludes that the involvement of the actors', mostly women, was a decisive factor. In relation to previous research the analysis provides a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the policy process both with regard to the ideas from which the client criminalization claim emanated and also with regard to the actors' role.

Chapter 1: Introduction: A historical and institutional perspective on women's political inclusion -- Chapter 2: Resisting democratisation: Arguments against female enfranchisement among members of the Swedish Parliament 1866–1918 -- Chapter 3: Struggles, resources and strategies: Portraits of six Swedish women suffrage activists -- Chapter 4: Intersectionality, identity and women's suffrage -- Chapter 5: Why were so few women elected? Political party strategies in Denmark and Sweden during the first parliamentary election after women's enfranchisement -- Chapter 6: Women's movements local election campaigns in Norway -- Chapter 7: Practising the right to vote: Female Voters and Male Inertia in Iceland, 1915–1944 -- Chapter 8: Her rights at work – women in parliament -- Chapter 9: Still signs of masculine norms in the parliamentary workplace? Political gender equality in Finland and Sweden after a century of universal suffrage -- Chapter 10: Critical culture: The role of institutional norms in gender sensitising parliaments -- Chapter 11: Conclusions: Theorising gendered institutional constraints and feminist strategies for institutional change.

AbstractWomen's access to political leadership positions has increased greatly in recent decades, which calls for research concerning the conditions of women's political leadership in more gender-balanced contexts. This article responds to this need by exploring the leadership ideals, evaluations, and treatment of men and women leaders in the numerically gender-equal Swedish parliament (the Riksdag). Drawing on interviews with almost all the current top political leaders in the Swedish parliament, along with an original survey of Swedish members of parliament, we reveal a mainly feminine-coded parliamentary leadership ideal that should be more appropriate for women leaders. Masculine practices remain, however, and women leaders continue to be disadvantaged. To explain this anomaly between ideals and practices, we argue that a feminist institutionalist perspective, which emphasizes how gender shapes a given context in multiple ways, contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the conditions for women's political leadership than that provided by the widely employed role congruity theory.

In this article, we introduce a Gendered Workplace Approach for studying the gendered nature of parliaments. This approach, which is informed by a feminist institutionalist perspective, addresses the potentially gendered character of both formal and informal institutions that regulate the inner workings of parliament, taking into consideration the obstacles and opportunities facing MPs of different genders. From a gender perspective, our framework focuses on five dimensions of paramount importance for MPs' working conditions. These are (i) the organisation of work, (ii) tasks and assignments, (iii) leadership, (iv) infrastructure and (v) interaction between MPs.

This introduction to the Special Section 'Parliaments as workplaces: gendered approaches to the study of legislatures' makes the case for revisiting the conditions under which male and female Members of Parliament (MPs) and staff carry out their parliamentary duties, thereby furthering the understanding of parliaments' inner workings. It shows that adopting a workplace perspective grounded on feminist institutionalist analyses and gender organisational studies opens up new avenues for studying parliaments and the outcomes of political representation. The article then outlines how contributors to this Special Section deal with various aspects of the parliamentary workplace and concludes by highlighting the wider implications of this perspective for examining crucial questions of the parliamentary studies research agenda.

This article addresses the establishment of gender-equality norms in a case often presented as one of the most gender-equal legislatures in the world, namely, the Swedish Parliament (Riksdagen). Based on a series of in-depth interviews between 2005 and 2016 with 90 legislators in the Swedish Parliament, we ask whether there is agreement over gender-equality problems in Parliament that cut across gender and party affiliation, and whether there is convergence over time in this regard. Our findings show that there is a trend of convergence of the gender-inequality framings over time, which indicates the establishment of a shared legislative gender-equality norm. We suggest that a legislative gender-equality norm might work as a catalyst for progressive and continuous work in this area.

Women and young constitute two underrepresented groups in most legislatures worldwide. The aim of this paper is to theorize and empirically analyze how the hitherto overlooked intersection between gender and young age condition legislators' opportunities to carry out their representative tasks on equal grounds. Using original survey data from the Swedish Parliament (response rate 82%, n = 287) in combination with 40 in-depth interviews with young male and female MPs, we ask whether being young in parliament have different implications for men and women legislators. We find that young women experience higher demands and anxiety, and are more subject to negative treatment compared to other groups. Young men, on the other hand, stand out as the least exposed group. Together our results demonstrate that a young age reinforces negative gendered patterns for women in parliament, while age appears irrelevant or even, at times, a beneficial factor for young men.

In this article, we introduce a Gendered Workplace Approach for studying the gendered nature of parliaments. This approach, which is informed by a feminist institutionalist perspective, addresses the potentially gendered character of both formal and informal institutions that regulate the inner workings of parliament, taking into consideration the obstacles and opportunities facing MPs of different genders. From a gender perspective, our framework focuses on five dimensions of paramount importance for MPs' working conditions. These are (i) the organisation of work, (ii) tasks and assignments, (iii) leadership, (iv) infrastructure and (v) interaction between MPs.