The Gender Equality Paradox
Over the last half century, women worldwide have made great strides toward gender equality. Womenâs legislative participation has doubled, so that about one of every five national legislators is a woman (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2016). These increases have mostly occurred in unexpected places such as Rwanda (with 63.8% women), Cuba, South Africa, Senegal, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Mozambique, Mexico, Angola, and Argentina. Even Arab authoritarian regimes, long the laggards in womenâs representation, have made progress over the last decade; Algeria and Sudan jumped from single digits to almost one-third, and Saudi Arabia from zero to one-fifth. The number of women heading political systems also swelled from none to 20 in 2011, representing 1 of 10 United Nations members (Hawkesworth 2012). In the new millennium, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has been among the most powerful politicians in the world, and other women have been elected presidents in presidential systems, including in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Much legislation has also been passed worldwide over the last half century. These include broad-based gender equality laws, but also more specific laws legalizing contraception and abortion, undermining religion-based family law, introducing gender quotas for political institutions, providing funds for parental leave and childcare, criminalizing violence against women , and legalizing same-sex relations, even marriage (Htun and Weldon 2010: 207). These are enhanced by a variety of international and regional agreementsâsuch as the United Nationsâ Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Council of Europeâs Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violenceâthat make radical calls for gender equality.
However, the advance of gender equality has been much slower than expected, especially for poor women and women of the non-dominant ethnicity or sexuality. Structural economic problems remain intractable: gaps in wages and pensions leave even upper-middle-class women in wealthy economies with millions of fewer dollars over their lifetimes than their male counterparts, while women in less wealthy countries are more likely to be poor and malnourished than men. There are also clear moves backward. Restrictions on womenâs rights to contraception and abortion have increased in countries such as Russia and the United States that used to be at the forefront. There are new ideologies of backlash in right-wing populist movements criticizing feminists and LGBTQ activists for destroying the family and the nation, even in democracies. Egregious acts of male dominance âgang rapes of âmodernâ women in India, acid throwing at schoolgirls in Afghanistan, and menâs mass shootings in the United States âpoint to aggressive resistance. In this context, equality in affective bonds and intimate relations, especially questions of sexual pleasure, remains so radical that most feminists only make claims to rights to live free from bodily harm.
These contradictions point to many paradoxes of gender equality highlighted in feminist political science . The impact of the increases of women in politics on policymaking has been underwhelming (Blofield and Haas 2013). Womenâs movements have often been unable to translate their social mobilization into political power (Banaszak et al. 2003). The passage of âgender equality ⊠initiatives ⊠[have had only] partial and variable institutionalization in terms of impact on institutional practices, norms, and outcomesâ (Mackay et al. 2009: 254â255). In Nordic contexts, where women have appeared to make the most progress, scholars point to the inclusion of only the dominant ethnicity women and to the inability of women to translate their political power into economic power (Lister 2009; Siim and Skjeie 2008; Hedfeldt and Hedlund 2011). Together, these point to a broad, political paradox: the advances that women have made in terms of inclusion in formal institutions and in the passage of legislation contrast with the realities of gender inequality experienced by differently situated women. In other words, gender equality is a wicked problem, complex and multifaceted with many hard-to-recognize facets and entrenched resistance.
This book argues that the primary obstacle holding women back in the twenty-first century is a revised form of male dominance that promises gender equality but simultaneously undercuts it. It is a con, a bait and switch. In what follows, I argue that womenâs and feminist movements have made it harder for most countries to maintain the formal rules that had limited women over the previous several centuries. At the same time, economic liberalization has strengthened elites outside of formal structures and constituted corrupted, informal rules and institutions. For example, elite women are promised pedestals as policymakers and in non-governmental organizations , but are then boxed in with little room or power to represent women or promote progressive change. Similarly, attempts to blame and shame countries for ignoring problems such as violence against women result in new laws, but with little budget or teeth, while inequality and violence increase. The bait and switch has blindsided activists and taken the steam out of many progressive movements, but people are beginning to fight back with a new kind of feminism.
The notion of a bait and switch in progressive politics is not a new one. Julie Mertus (2004) argued that the United Statesâ proclaimed commitment to universal human rights was like a used car salesman promising he can deliver more, with different standards for itself and its allies than for its enemies. Barbara Ehrenreich (2005) made a similar argument about the American dream: even when people get college degrees with marketable skills, they remain at risk of financial catastrophe because there are little social supports. But putting this metaphor in the front and center of feminist political science brings an important new lens for understanding the gender equality paradox. As Maria Konnikova (2016: 36) argues in her book summarizing the psychological literature on the confidence game, con men âin some sense, merely take our regular white lies to next level,â and we are all susceptible to such scams because of a basic instinct to trust, causing us to overlook what we know to be true, especially when strong emotions are at play. Advocates for progressive change, with their strong emotions and prerequisite optimism, are thus likely marks, especially in polities where there are powerful white lies that the system runs according to constitutionally established rules. The scam is a byzantine and powerful system that interacts with these white lies, which too much of political science has overlooked with their Western and confirmation biases.
Feminist Institutionalism and Postcommunist Regime Dynamics
To explore and develop this bait-and-switch lens, this book heavily draws from feminist institutionalism and postcommunist regime dynamics, two political science literatures that, at first glance, seem unconnected. On the one hand, building upon other types of historical and sociological institutionalism, scholars working within feminist institutionalism have shown that rules about how men and women are to behaveâthat is, gender, in intersection with other structures such as race, class, and sexualityâare an intractable part of political institutions (Krook and Mackay 2011; BjarnegĂ„rd 2013; Chappell and Waylen 2013). Some rules are obviously gendered, such as Soviet laws restricting women from some of the most lucrative jobs, but seemingly gender-neutral institutionsâsuch as formal rules allowing year-long election campaigning or informal rules that major decisions should be made in the naked sauna or on the golf courseâmay have gendered impact (Chappell and Waylen 2013: 7â8). Feminist institutionalists also examine how âpolitical institutions affect whether women can âact forâ womenâ (Waylen 2010: 227). Institutions can be gendered in ways that promote gender equality, such as agencies charged with promoting gender equality and new expectations by international organizations that states respond to violence against women . As Louise Chappell and Georgina Waylen (2013: 602) have argued, gendered rules of the game are complex, working differently in different political arenas, and the consequences of gendered informal institutions are essential to power, as they shape who gets to decide policy and the distribution of resources.
Though, to date, the focus has been on formal rules, feminist institutionalism has begun to consider the gendered â informal ârules of the gameââ (Krook and Mackay 2011: 1). Scholars are gendering the work of Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky (2004: 727), who conceptualized informal institutions as âsocially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels.â That is, informal institutions are rules, more than just informal behavioral regularities, in which there is an enforcement mechanism for non-conformi...