Gender Mainstreaming and Resistance to Gender Training: A Framework for Studying Implementation

Abstract

Resistance expressed by both organizations and participants in processes of gender training that are conducted to mainstream gender into policy-making poses a key challenge for gender mainstreaming. However, such resistance is relatively under-studied. This article explores resistance to gender training that emerges during the implementation of gender mainstreaming by determining the types and forms of resistance to gender training and by finding out just what this analysis of resistance tells us about the problems arising in the implementation of gender mainstreaming. We argue that analysing resistance to gender training—and identifying the types and forms of such resistance—can contribute to diagnosing problems in the implementation of mainstreaming and furthermore be used for improving this implementation. This study is based on data from participant observation in training processes and from the work conducted in two European research projects, QUING and TARGET, both of which debated the issue of gender training in expert meetings and forums made up of trainers, policy-makers, and academics.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on research conducted within the framework of the QUING (Quality in Gender Equality Policies European research project, www.quing.eu) and the TARGET (Transnational Applied Research in Gender Equity Training) EU-US research project (http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/TARGET/aboutus2.htm), whose team members and the European Commission funder we wish to thank. We also thank all the gender trainers who have participated in the expert meetings and online forums, sharing their time and expertise with us.

Funding

This work was supported by QUING (Quality in Gender + Equality Policies) [Project Ref: 028545-2], funded under the European Commission's VI Framework Program. Duration: 54 months (Oct. 2006-March 2011); TARGET (Transnational Applied Research in Gender Equity Training) [Project Reference: 2007-2068/003-001], funded under the European Commission EU-US Atlantis Program (Policy Oriented Measures). Duration: 24 months (Nov. 2007-Nov. 2009).

Notes

¹ “OPERA” is the name of the research activity that addressed gender training issues within the QUING project.

² See http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/TARGET/aboutus2.htm.

³ A total of 53 individuals registered to participate in the forums, coming from different European and American countries, and international organizations such as the UN and EU (Ferguson et al. 2011: 25).

⁴ Of the 126 participants in the 2011 conference, 50 were gender trainers or practitioners, 37 were academics, and 39 were policy-makers or commissioners of gender training (Ferguson et al. 2011).

⁵ See www.yellowwindow.be/genderinresearch.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emanuela Lombardo

Emanuela Lombardo, PhD in Politics at the University of Reading (UK), is Lecturer at the Department of Political Science and Administration II of Madrid Complutense University in Spain. She has worked as researcher in different European projects (European Commission FP4, FP5, and FP6, and POM Programs). Her research interests concern gender equality policies, particularly in the European Union and Spain. On these issues she has published articles in journals such as Comparative European Politics, Political Science, Social Politics, European Journal of Women's Studies, Feminist Review, Journal of Women Politics and Policy, Women's Studies International Forum, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Citizenship Studies, as well as chapters in edited volumes. Her latest book, edited with Maxime Forest, is The Europeanization of Gender Equality Policies (Palgrave 2012). Her forthcoming monograph, authored with Petra Meier, is titled The Symbolic Representation of Gender (Ashgate). For further information see http://www.ucm.es/info/target/.

Lut Mergaert

Lut Mergaert holds a PhD in Management Sciences from the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. For her dissertation, she studied gender mainstreaming implementation by the European Commission in the research policy area. She works as research director at Yellow Window, where she is partner and member of the management team. Her main focus is on decision-support studies for the public sector, with a specialization in gender-related subjects. She has most recently been principal investigator and co-ordinator of three pan-European research projects on gender issues for the European Institute for Gender Equality: a study of collected narratives on gender perceptions in 27 EU Member States (2011); a study into the current situation and trends regarding female genital mutilation in the 27 EU Member States and Croatia (2012); and a study on institutional capacity for gender mainstreaming in the European Commission, the EU Member States, and Croatia (2013).