Understanding Institutional Change from a Gender Perspective

Abstract

Many institutionalist scholars, and historical institutionalists in particular, have recognised for some time that our understanding of institutional change needs to be improved. Taking this premise as its starting point, this working paper develops it by arguing that we not only need to understand institutional change better but that we also need to improve our understanding of how it is gendered. The paper brings together key elements from institutional analysis with recent gender and politics scholarship, to form an analytical framework that can be used to examine how different instances of institutional change are gendered. After exploring the gaps in current analyses, the paper outlines some key insights from historical institutionalism (and particularly from Mahoney and Thelen's 2010 framework) as well as feminist institutionalism, delineating some different forms of institutional change and developing some key themes for each one that might enable us to better understand not only how each is gendered, but also how far each form might be used by change actors as a gender equity strategy. The working paper ends with a plea for further research to discern the utility of these concepts and framework.

Informal Institutions, Institutional Change, and Gender Equality

“…However this does not mean that this work cannot be used to undertake gendered analyses. Some institutionalist scholarship, particularly the Historical Institutionalist variant, which is relatively methodologically pluralist, problem driven and historically focused with an emphasis on the importance of context, power and distributional struggles, can provide some useful tools and concepts (Waylen 2012).…”

“…Reforming formal rules may end officially sanctioned gender bias, but will not necessarily overcome all institutionalised forms of male bias as informal rules may undermine formal rule change. To date few analyses of this kind have been undertaken particularly in the context of institutional change (Waylen 2012). But to contribute to advances in the gendered analysis of formal and informal institutional change, this paper will first examine how current institutionalist, and particularly historical institutionalist, scholarship can help us analyse (endogenous) institutional change, before uncovering formal and informal rules, norms and practices within these processes.…”

It’s gender Jim, but not as we know it … A critical review of constructions of gendered knowledge of the Global South

“…As the calls under the Joint Fund have evolved, so too have the ways in which gender has been included in the calls, and this change may mirror a wider change in how the Joint Fund as an ‘institution’ understands gender. Feminist Institutionalist theories posit that gender not only operates at the level of the subjective/interpersonal but is also a feature of formal and informal institutions (here the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund) and helps us understand how institutional change can occur (Waylen, 2014). Gender relations are not only institutional but may also be understood as ‘institutionalized’, embedded in institutions, constraining and shaping them through the construction of rules, norms and policies (Mackay et al, 2010).…”

Gender and the EU's Support for Security Sector Reform in Fragile Contexts

“…Feminist Institutionalism or FI (Chappell and Waylen 2013;Kenny, 2007;Kenny and MacKay, 2009;Mackay et al 2009;Mackay and Krook 2015;Waylen 2014) draws on certain concepts within the historical institutionalist (HI) variant of New Institutionalism (NI). The concepts of HI are useful as they help to illuminate the role of actors or agents, temporal dimensions and unintended consequences of institutional choices (Bulmer 1993;Pierson 1996).…”