The Rules of the Game: Organizing Gender Policies in Australia and Sweden

摘要

This comparative analysis examines how policy issues central to the feminist agenda were introduced and eventually established in Swedish and Australian politics from the early 1960s to late 1980s. The theoretical discussion revolves around the analytical concept gender policy logics and its relevance in empirical analyses of gender policy-making. Focus is specifically set on the role of administrative structures in the processes of policy formation and on how certain institutional mechanisms accelerate certain gender policy paths and depoliticize others. The analysis indicates that different mechanisms stand out as decisive for gender policy-making in Sweden and Australia. Australian gender politics was to a great extent maintained by the actors' organizational skills: by their ability to reconfigure, change arenas, and find alternative coalitions. In Sweden, the crucial capacity for continuation rather concerned a discursive competence: how to conceptualize the demands and to stretch or revise the policies in order to meet approval. Four policy issues were examined over time: childcare, job training, sex discrimination, and violence against women.