The Globalisation of Equality Policies: From Social Reformism to State Reformism

**

Virgínia Ferreira

Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra. Centre for Social Studies

Abstract: This text starts by discussing the transformations associated with the

process of globalisation in terms of ways of exercising social regulation and of the new role

that international agencies have in this regulation, particularly in what concerns policies of

equality between the sexes. The changes indicated allow us to understand the political

philosophy that led from social reformism to state reformism and to the paradigm of indirect

discrimination and mainstreaming. In the main part of the text, the author highlights the

growing influence of international agencies and transnational NGO on the formulation of

current equality policies. Finally, she addresses the difficulties brought to the prosecution of

these policies by their globalised character.

1. Introduction

Many are the ambiguities that have accompanied the evolution of policies for equality

between the sexes in present western societies. Although there is no consensus regarding either

the principle of such policies and much less even regarding modalities of intervention and

resources to be mobilised, their dissemination throughout the various different regions of the

globe is undoubtedly impressive. The same however cannot be said regarding their

effectiveness. One of the possible reasons to explain the situation has to do with the growing

importance of international agencies.

I would like to thank my colleagues Teresa Tavares, José Manuel Pureza, and Pedro Hespanha for their invaluable comments and insightful suggestions on an earlier version of this text and Isabel Pedro for the translation into English. Any existing inadequacies are, of course, the author’s own responsibility. ** In The GEP International Conference – New Challenges to Gender, Democracy, Welfare States, Vol. Workshop 4 – Restructuring the Welfare State, Aalborg Universitet, The Research Programme Gender, Empowerment and Politics, 129-147. French version in: "La mondialisation des politiques d’égalité : du réformisme social au réformisme d’État", Cahiers du Genre, 33, Paris, L’Harmattan, 63-83. Portuguese version in. Tatu Godinho e Maria Lúcia da Silveira (org.), Políticas Públicas e Igualdade de Gênero, São Paulo, Coordenadoria Especial da Mulher da Prefeitura do Município de São Paulo e Fundação Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 77-102.

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In Portuguese society, the process within which the recent Ministry for Equality was

created can provide the motive for introducing the interrogation which has guided this

reflection. The candidate to Prime Minister, who had announced during the electoral campaign

that his first priority would be the equality between women and men, was unable to publicly

defend the creation of that Ministry when the initiative was the subject of so much controversy

and discredit in the media. From some of the Prime Minister’s stammering statements on the

matter we could make it out that the reasons had to do with ‘our international commitments’.

If we bear in mind the fact that Portugal held the presidency of the EU during the first semester

of the current year, it becomes clear that the Ministry for Equality had the main mission of

serving as an interlocutor with those responsible for similar structures in the other EU

countries. In fact, the tasks awaiting the Portuguese government included the representation of

the EU points of view in the special session of the General Assembly of the United Nations

(the Beijing + 5) which was to assess compliance with the Beijing Action Platform.

Seen as a response to an international commitment, that political intervention is only

one of many episodes that can be identified in the field of policies for equality between the

sexes in our most recent history, and more specifically since the late 1970s, when we began to

prepare our legal system with a view to joining the European Economic Community (EEC).

The evolution of equality policies is directed by the initiatives taken at EU level, and it

becomes clear that most legal interventions have emerged as low profile responses to the

European Commission directives (Ferreira, 1998b).

We might say that this is not exactly news. We might perhaps think that it happens

only in Portugal, a country in the European periphery, without strong social movements and

with a low intensity democracy characterised by the carnivalisation of politics (Santos, 1994;

Ferreira, 1998a and 1998/1999). What is most intriguing, however, is the fact that, with few

exceptions, the assessment that can be made on the basis of other national or regional

experiences evinces the very same pattern – the fundamental role of international agencies in

the formulation of policies of equality between the sexes. This is generally accompanied by

another conclusion, i.e., that the indelible mark of liberalism in its origin is reflected in the low

level of enforcement of those policies, when they are transposed into the different national

legal systems. In fact, official structures for the promotion of equality between women and

men have been created in almost all countries. Legislation against discrimination became

widespread and, in some legal systems, legal and/or constitutional provisions were introduced

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to depenalise positive action. The promotion of equality of opportunities is often referred to as

one of the priorities of both governmental and intergovernmental action. This whole

intervention cannot but cause a strong impression, which contrasts with the frustration that

emerges when one realises what has in fact been accomplished. The enacting of legislation is

not duly regulated, structures are not conveniently adapted, and resources are not allocated for

the interventions planned. In most countries, there is a huge gap between formalised policies

and those actually implemented.

The question one cannot help but ask is why governments commit themselves in the

context of international agencies and then they fail to implement those measures at home. This

question may be divided into two aspects. First, as regards the type of pressures that

international agencies respond to concerning the adoption of these programmes for the

promotion of sexual equality. Second, we have to examine the web that involves international

relationships and pushes governments into accepting unwanted, or barely tolerated,

commitments.

Those were the perplexities that led me to the present reflection. I want to try and

understand the transformations associated with the globalisation process, in terms of the modes

of exercising social regulation and of the new role of international and transnational agencies

regarding this regulation.

2. From the reform of society to state reform

Boaventura de Sousa Santos characterised the phase of social reformism (up to the

1980s) as that of the regulation of normal social change, with no ruptures. The main

normalisation devices used by this social reformism are law, education, and cultural identity

(Santos, 1998). This reformism seeks to correct social problems that affect the expression of

socially desirable values. A certain social norm is judged as good, and therefore the only thing

that has to be done is to correct the deviations from that same norm by individuals whose

behaviour is considered to be aberrant. States then choose to reform society, a sine qua non

condition for fully complying with the new anti-discrimination regulations of the legal system.

In this context, political intervention is reduced to a minimum, depending on the existence of

individual complainants who are victims of discrimination. It is mainly the plasticity and

abstraction of those reforms that allows the adoption of this model in very different social

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contexts. In fact, it both serves to justify the typical intervention of the Welfare State in the

most developed countries and that of the developmentalist State, in less developed ones. It also

explains why social reformism is so international a model (Santos, 1998).

On the contrary, the paradigm of indirect discrimination presupposes that

discrimination is structural, systemic, and it may lead to the questioning of all social practices

(Bacchi, 1996: 19). It may even call into question the very constitution and operation of the

State. That is why the strategy of mainstreaming is held to be the only possible way to ensure a

high degree of effectiveness for positive actions.

Mainstreaming is therefore but a form of state reformism, a strategy by way of which

the State seeks to reform itself. It is a technical and political process that requires changes in

both organisational cultures and ways of thinking, as well as objectives, structures and the

allocation of resources on the part of all the protagonists. That is, the States, but also

international agencies and non-governmental organisations. Mainstreaming requires change at

all levels: in the setting of priorities, in the definition, planning, implementation and monitoring

of policies. Its tools include: new budget decisions and a different model of human resources

management, training actions, the revision of institutional procedures, and the elaboration and

dissemination of manuals of good practices. The question to be posed is that of knowing who

the subjects of these changes will be.

State reformism underwent two different stages (Santos, 1998). The first of those

occurred during practically the whole of the 1980s and corresponded to a ‘minimum State’

neo-liberal strategy. As the State declared itself to be ‘irreformable’, the only possible strategy

would be to privatise as much as possible, to intervene in order not to intervene.1 In its present

stage, as opposite to social reformism or even the early phase of state reformism, reformation

becomes the responsibility of those sectors of society with the power to intervene in the State.

Largely as a consequence of the earlier strategy of reducing the State and privatising public

services, and also of the higher degree of intervention on the part of supranational agencies,

1 The ‘free choice’ logic underlying the privatisation of collective services, which was emphasised during the 80s in some countries with more marked neoliberal approaches, inevitably leads to the exclusion of less-favoured social groups, which means, of course, the poorer women. The type of control and sanctioning actions carried out by the State proves to be incapable of guaranteeing compliance with the principle of equality of opportunities for all (Forbes, 1977).

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the State becomes de-politicised and social regulation ‘de-statised’, with the powerful

emergence of the so-called third sector (Santos, 1999).2

Within this new framework of social regulation, transnationalisation becomes much

more intense then it was during the social reformism stage. International agencies, both

governmental and non-governmental, gained unusual visibility and centrality in this context.3

Since it would be impossible here to describe the developments occurred in all aspects of this

transnationalisation, we will try to give a very general outline of some of the changes in the

international relationships which have, for nearly three decades, converged towards the

acceleration and intensification of the interference of international agencies regarding equality

policies.

2.1. On the way to an international regime?

Recent historical research has shown that, from very early on, women have fought for

sex equity within international organisations (for instance, the collection of texts edited by

Sinha, Guy and Woollacott, 1999). In a survey of multilateral conventions with some relevance

to the problem of women’s rights and equality between the sexes, 355 were counted between

1890 and 1986, a period of nearly 100 years, which means an average of almost 4 per year

(Reinalda and Verhaaren, referred in Reinalda, 1977: 207). Bob Reinalda (1997: 206) indicates

Marie Goegg as the first woman to intervene in international arenas for the defence of equality

between the sexes, in 1868, and identifies the famous Hague peace conferences, between 1899

and 1907, as the first international fora in which women lobbied actively for the inclusion of

their claims. In fact, in 1919, the International Women’s Lobby was able to include an article

in the founding text of the League of Nations, according to which all offices controlled by the

2 This sector is composed of the group of social organisations which, in spite of not being state organisations, have social objectives and which, in spite of being private organisations, are not governed by a logic of profit. They are commonly called non governmental organisations (NGO), but they can also include co-operatives, mutual associations, or private institutions for social solidarity (Santos, 1998: 13). The following data provide an idea of the magnitude of this phenomenon: the number of NGO in Nepal increased from 220, in 1990, to 1210, in 1993; in Tunisia, the figure of 1886, in the year 1988, rose to 5186 in 1991 (Hulme & Edwards, quoted in Santos, 1998: 23). In Portugal, a country characterised by a weak mobilisation of civil society, 800 new private institutions for social solidarity were recorded, which corresponds to an average of more than 130 per year (Hespanha, 1999: 31). 3 The following aspects should be highlighted: the role of the European Union as well as the other intergovernmental agencies, such as UNO, through the ILO, for instance, and the Council of Europe; the adequacy and effectiveness of the legal instruments used (especially treaties, conferences, directives, conventions and recommendations); the impact of the economic policies of the World Bank and the

6

League or connected with it, should be equally open to men and women. This simple step was

decisive, because ‘it provided women at global level with the official possibility of engaging in

intergovernmental arrangements and to fight for all kinds of issues, among them the

recognition of equal rights and roles’ (Reinalda, 1997: 205). The above-mentioned survey by

Reinalda and Verhaaren (cited in Reinalda, 1997:207) recorded, for the period between 1868

and 1986, 15 intergovernmental organisations with one or more sections (committees,

commissions, work groups, etc.) dedicated to women’s issues, as well as 336 women’s

organisations and international networks active during that period. Of those, 61 were

appointed as consultants for one or more intergovernmental organisations.

Women’s organisations, especially transnational ones, have sought to actively

influence intergovernmental decision fora through different processes and the most diversified

means. Lobbying is one of the most common practices organisations can easily resort to, since

intergovernmental organisations are usually very receptive to it. Part of the reason for that lies

in both the rules and the intensification of international relationships. As any institutional

analysis of the decision making processes (for example, Mazey and Richardson, 1993) will

demonstrate, what frequently happens is that international organisations, either

intergovernmental or not, resort to non governmental organisations to confirm information

provided by official sources, an attitude that has to a large extent stimulated the growth of the

third sector.

In the EU, lobbying has been intensified by a conjunction of factors. One of them is

the preference of the European Commission for negotiating with only a single organisation

instead of with one of each of the Member States (Mazey and Richardson, 1993). This practice

has also contributed to increase the importance of transnational women’s organisations. One of

the most powerful among those NGO is no doubt the European Women’s Lobby, an

organisation which has always made a point of maintaining a close connection with its national

delegations.

In this way a space was created in which equality policies are reinforced through the

exchange of experiences and knowledge and the increase of transnational feminist networks,

some of which are officially fostered. In parallel to that, the increase in production and

circulation of information throughout the ‘global village’, of which those networks are

International Monetary Fund, etc.; the nature and the scope of positive actions; the role of national governments in social regulation; the activity of transnational women’s associations, etc.

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excellent conveyors, introduces a new transparency at the level of global politics and creates a

situation in which both cases of violation and of omission at national level become more visible

and therefore embarrassing for the governments in question. By promoting comparisons

between countries, the annual publication, since 1990, of the Human Development Report

(HDR) of the United Nations Development Programme makes governments aware of the fact

that they have never been so internationally exposed as they are at present. Comparison with

other realities strengthens the claims of women in the whole world, and it contributes to their

general credibility, and most specially before governments. Social movements can always

appeal to ‘our international commitments’ to demand intervention and, by their turn,

governments can do the same to defend themselves from opposition regarding the measures

that they have started. The effect of legitimisation is created via the de-politisation of claims

operated by a comparison with other countries.

As a consequence of that, social movements, like non governmental organisations,

become fundamental components for building what Bob Reinalda (1977:99) calls an

‘international regime’, a concept intended to convey the sense of relationships of co-operation

and the co-ordination of policies in specific areas on the part of the States and other

intervening agencies, through an agreement regarding principles, norms, rules, and decision-

making procedures.

One of the areas in which the existence of that international regime becomes more

visible is that of co-operation for the development of less-developed countries. There we can

exactly find an adequate area for reflecting on the interventions upon the social, given the

quasi-experimental character of those interventions. The findings of that reflection have been

incorporated into the field of equality policies, through a process of cross fecundation from

which both fields have certainly profited.

It is totally impossible to trace the development of the WID (Women in Development)

trend towards the GAD (Gender and Development) trend in the present article. We can only

underline the fact that, within the WID framework, it was expected that investment in the

productivity of women would yield a solid return in both economic and social terms - by

facilitating women’s access to technology and to credit, the productivity of their work would

increase, and that would have a positive impact upon national development.

Many of those projects failed because, as many studies clearly show, their economic

aims were converted into social welfare actions for women or went only as far as developing

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their competencies in nutrition and traditional crafts. That meant that very little was in fact

achieved in terms of reducing the economic marginalisation of women. In fact, the measures

implemented included neither a consideration of the power relationships between the sexes nor

of the important interdependency that exists between the activities carried out by men and

those carried out by women in order to ensure survival.

The impact of WID was especially felt in the intensification of research on the

situation of women as well as in the impulse it gave to the growth of institutional machinery

within governments and development agencies with a mandate to include women in

development (Ravazi and Miller, 1995a). By 1985, 90% of the countries had already

institutionalised mechanisms for the promotion of equality between women and men (Oxaal,

1997).

Founded in an analysis of gender, the GAD movement is not based in such arguments

as the efficacy of investments, or the relevance of women’s contribution towards development.

Development institutions are rather encouraged to consider gender in order to improve

developmentalist policies and practices. That does not mean that there is no interest in

promoting women’s access to resources or increasing their productivity. They simply do not

start from the notion that, in order to increase their productivity, the only thing that has to be

done is to facilitate their access to those resources (Ravazi and Miller, 1995a). The statement

of their point of view makes it obvious that there is a clear articulation between the strategy of

mainstreaming and that of the empowerment of women (resources plus autonomy).

Empowerment can be understood as a process through which populations, and women in

particular, either individually or collectively, become aware of how power relations operate in

their lives and build the self-confidence and the capacity to challenge them. The current

popularity of the concept of empowerment reflects the change of a paradigm that imposes top-

down changes into another more participatory paradigm in which populations should be given

a voice regarding the options available to them. This change has been manifest in the growing

tendency for agencies that provide development ‘assistance’ to establish elective partnerships

with civil society organisations, thereby passing over the state channels. This new perspective

governs programs for the granting of credit, training for political participation, and leadership

and reproductive health.

The current change of paradigm can be illustrated through some concrete examples.

Given the criticism regarding the restrictive character of the scope of equality policies, limited

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to equality in employment, international organisations have been pressing national governments

towards extending the ambit of their intervention. They now include issues beyond the

guaranty of fair treatment in employment and in women’s work. The new strategic areas of

action are education for equality and citizenship, the fight against pornography and the traffic

of women, reproductive health, sexual harassment, rape and violence against women in

general, and the ‘feminisation’ of poverty (related to family laws and the access to property

and social security).

In the compilation of texts edited by Jane Jenson and Boaventura de Sousa Santos,

we may find some examples of the process of internationalisation of political changes (Jenson

and Santos, 2000), among which I would emphasise the case of South Africa (Seidman, 2000).

In the process of transition towards democracy, the public opinion was surprised by the

expressively marked presence of women (50%, in fact) in the group of negotiators.

International dynamics had a decisive influence on the concepts of democracy and citizenship

that came to be widely accepted, offering new perspectives and new material resources to

groups which would otherwise be unable to influence public debate. This then justifies the

incorporation of concerns regarding inequalities between women and men at the highest level

in the process of transition. Sweden supports a pioneering project in this country aimed at

producing sex-differentiated diagnoses of the State’s budget and the legal system, showing

how men are privileged beneficiaries of both resources and education and health services,

employment projects, social benefits, pensions, etc.

The main vehicle in this process was international co-operation for development.4 As

main contributors to international aid directed to poor countries, especially northern countries

have exerted an important pressure towards the inclusion of concerns regarding the

improvement of both the situation and the statute of women in the agendas of external

relations as well as in the programmes of international organisations for development.5

4 The signs of the existence of these concerns are multiple. I will refer but a few of them: - In December 1995, the European Council decided that development ‘assistance’ provided by the Commission and the member states should from then on be based on a perspective of equality; in 1991, the OECD began to modify its approach to co-operation for development, with a report by a High-Level Group of Experts to the General Secretary called Conducting Structural Change – the Role of Women. In 1998, the OEDC issued a guide to incorporate gender in all development co-operation (OECD, 1998). This year, the DAC Expert Group on Women in Development was significantly re-baptised DAC Working Party on Gender Equality. 5 The Swedish Foreign Relations policy extensively illustrates the implications of adopting the participatory development model. According to a document issued by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, in 1998 (SMFA, 1998), equality between the sexes is the objective which presides development ‘assistance’ actions.

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This was the way that led to a progressive integration of the perspective brought to

the theory of international relations by women’s studies (for example, Pettman, 1995).

According to that perspective, international relations should be re-conceptualised so as to give

a new centrality to women. This centrality should re-equate the value of basic goods such as

nutrition, health and environmental security, while war and the rush for armament should

become secondary concerns (Deacon, 1997: 7). As a consequence of this new framework, we

now have governments from all over the world being subjected to more and more pressured

towards the institutionalisation of the perspective of equality between the sexes in their

policies. International agencies count on non-governmental organisations to reinforce that

pressure.

2.2. Global Plans for Equality of Opportunities

What has been said so far might seem to suggest that external pressure is directed

solely to those countries that are the recipients of international development ‘assistance’.

However, that is not the point of view I mean to defend. In the EU countries there exists the

same climate of influence and the directives in force are concretely constituted to coerce the

Member States (Duncan, 1996). The ‘international commitments’ that the Portuguese

government feels pressed by are especially those originating in the EU. The UNO has also

contributed to a highly coactive and generalised climate, as was recently patent in the

assessment process called Beijing + 5.

From reading the material now available, which was produced at the request of UNO,

we can conclude that the gains obtained are especially of a political nature.6 When the aim is to

indicate future directions to be taken, the discourse stresses the need to implement the

approved policies: complying with Global Plans for Equality, the intensification of both internal

and international agencies lobbying, namely with a view to the relief of external debts, etc.

The role of international agencies in promoting those policies is obvious in their very

plans. The allocation of national resources is very rare outside the European region and North

America, and many countries refer only one group of international agencies as resources to

complete the actions planned – if specific actions do at all exist. The example of Congo may

6 The findings of the monitoring of the implementation of the Beijing Platform are available in the website Women Watch – The UN Internet Gateway on the Advancement and Empowerment of Women: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/index.html

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serve to illustrate that. The following agencies are mentioned: the United Nations

Development Program (UNDP) the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World

Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF, FAO and UNESCO. Besides those, bilateral co-

operation in that area between the country and ‘France, the United States of America,

Germany, and the European Economic Community’ is also mentioned. However, in no other

case is the role of the agencies of co-operation for development described in such a direct

manner as in the Uganda report, which states: ‘the government are discussing with the donors

with a view to speeding up the drafting of the action plan’.

This being the result of the pressure for the institutionalisation of sexual equality in

the formulation of policies in general, let us now consider some of the consequences of the

distrust of the international donator agencies regarding the State and their preference instead

for civil society organisations.

2.3. NGO as new transnational actors

The growing internationalisation of political structures and the globalisation of social

movements, on the one hand, together with the more marked multilateral character of

international relations and the strengthening of the influence of international non governmental

institutions, on the other, lead to the constitution of what some authors call a global civil

society (Moghadam, 1999). The role played by non governmental organisations is decisive

here. As trust in the State decreased, these organisations came to be considered as privileged

partners for intervention by those agencies involved in development ‘assistance’, especially in

regions with a higher degree of social and political instability, and more clearly so after the

outbreak of ethnic or other types of conflicts.

Civil society organisations therefore emerge as fundamental elements of an

‘international regime’ (Reinalda, 1997) within an ideological and political framework where

political issues such as human rights, good government, and the participation of the

populations are becoming increasingly prominent, and where social rights are given a stronger

and stronger emphasis. Civil society organisations are now seen as having a fundamental role

to play in the organisation of the most impoverished sectors of the populations, assisting them

in the building up and strengthening of their capacities for organisation or facilitating the

establishment of groups. This attitude has proved to be a strong lever for the formulation of

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policies for equality as well as for the mobilisation of civil society. We should note that there is

a widespread belief that governments are now becoming more responsive to political pressure,

in a period of crisis regarding the external debt of many countries, where inter-dependency

among States increases. That situation renders autarchy less feasible.

This is the context in which women have attained recognition of their statute as

agents, frequently transnational agents. The action of women’s transnational networks has

gained an enormous impetus concerning economic, political and international relations issues.

The warning given in the 80s against the serious consequences of policies of structural

adjustment upon women’s life conditions did in some sense inaugurate this new phase of

transnationalisation.

The new ethical relativism which predominates after the fall of the Berlin wall also

facilitates contacts and co-operation around many cross-cutting themes which constitute the

web of global feminism: violence against women, poverty, access to property, and the role of

women in the decision-making process.

3. State reformism and mainstreaming

International commitments are forged within a relationship of co-operation among the

different actors of the global scene, with the establishment of consensuses at the highest level.

One of the reasons for that is the unquestionable legitimacy of the claims represented by the

movements for the defence of women’s rights. Another is the generally acknowledged need to

endow the social and economic system with an increased efficacy on the basis of the

elimination of inequalities between the sexes. Some authors do interpret that influence as the

product of a process of change which is imposed top-down and is therefore unable to go

beyond mere rhetoric and introduce concrete change at the level of both individual attitudes

and social practices (Goetz, 1995, among others); others recognise the existence of a

remarkable potential for transformation (Outshoorn, 1997, among others). It is certainly not

easy to choose between those two positions. Some argue that the adoption of the equality of

opportunities principle is but a vague consequence of the second wave of the feminist

movement, which started in the 60s. Buckley and Anderson (cited in Reinalda, 1997: 213), for

instance, argue that the production of the first 3 directives concerning equality of opportunities

between women and men in the European Union (between 1975 and 1978) was motivated by

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the happy coincidence of the re-emergence of the feminist movement with the creation of The

European Economic Community.

3.1. The role of key actors

Other authors, however, tend not to identify the feminist movement as so direct a

cause. Bob Reinalda, for example, argues that the change in the political orientation in Europe

as regards the issue of equality between the sexes was due to a constellation of factors, among

which he gives special emphasis to the action undertaken by a group of women who, on the

basis of their official positions, developed a kind of ‘inter-state feminism’.7 For Bob Reinalda,

who is specially attentive to what goes on at micro level in international institutions as well as

to the play of interactions between institutional agents, the most important fact was the action

of a small group of women, well-oriented and well adapted to a situation of organisational

change within the European Commission, with the then new membership of the United

Kingdom, of Ireland and of Denmark; the lack of interest on the part of other important actors,

such as trade-unions, who generally did not believe in the EEC project; and the relative

support of a group of feminist intellectuals. We must add that theirs was a relative support

because only during the 90s did the feminist movement begin to see the EU as a relevant

agency for the development of their combat against inequalities between the sexes. As the

author puts it, EU equality policies are therefore not a result of the action of some dea ex

machina, but rather of feminae in machina (Reinalda, 1997: 213-214). And last, we must also

stress the conclusions of another study on ILO, by Ravazi and Miller, according to whom

concerns regarding equality of opportunities in that organisation in the last twenty years were

mainly due to the moral and financial support provided by key donors as well as to the work of

activists in internal politics (Ravazi and Miller, 1995b: 65).8

At the level of national states, it also is possible to mention the role of key actors. Bob

Reinalda does not use that term, but the women he mentions have a ‘femocratic’ profile,

regardless of whether or not they are incorporated in the state feminist institutions (Stetson

7 The author particularly mentions a woman, Jacqueline Nonon, who, from the DG V, the General Direction for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs, made an extensive use of the work and academic activities of women like Evelyne Sullerot, Ursula Hirschmann and Eliane Vogel-Polsky as well as of her own technical and tactical capacities, and in articulation with a very committed group of women from the then recent European Trade Union Confederation, to influence the European Commission into proposing especially the second and the third above- mentioned directives. 8 That is made very clear in a recent report made by José Hipólito dos Santos (Santos, 1999) for the ILO.

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and Mazur, 1995). In her reading of the development of equality policies in The Netherlands,

Joyce Outshoorn mentions the happy convergence of the ‘iron triangle’, which is constituted

by three types of actors: 1) the leaders of the most important women’s organisations; 2) State

officers working on women’s issues; and 3) politicians who are members of specialised

committees. An example can be found in Portugal, in the second half of the 90s, which

confirms the importance of the action of certain actors. During that period, CITE - Comissão

para a Igualdade no Trabalho e no Emprego (Commission for Equality in Labour and

Employment) – has a totally different dynamics from the one it had during the first fifteen years

of its history, where it had a number of different leaders. With its present leader, the activity of

CITE has shown that its tripartite composition (government, employers and trade-union

representatives) was not the only cause for the inertia that characterised it, as I have argued

elsewhere (Ferreira, 1998b).

3.2. Resistance to the mainstreaming strategy

This discussion leads us to the dispute regarding the effectiveness of the action of

state feminism, the development of which can only be very briefly mentioned in this paper. I

would only like to stress the notion that both inter-state and state feminisms are depicted in the

above mentioned analyses as a product of the individual action of women (or even

exceptionally, of men) who, given their position within the governmental or inter-governmental

bureaucratic apparatuses, are capable of influencing decisions at the highest level. However,

the question is whether it is possible to extend that influence to the entire State machinery. It is

certainly easier to convince an individual minister of the goodness of a certain law then to

convince all the State agents involved in its enforcement. That will be especially true when the

measure in question reads more like a declaration of intentions and if neither the necessary

conditions for its implementation nor the sanctions for non-compliance are formally regulated.

Therefore, the process of policy definition, when it moves top-down on the basis of individual

action, is necessarily condemned to a low level of effectiveness.

Let us now go back to the earlier question about the State’s capacity for self-reform.

Let us consider the modalities of intervention adequate to a mainstreaming strategy. Besides

the introduction of quotas, the most widely disseminated modality (which is also, it should be

noted, the less applied one), others should also be used, such as: 1) the preparation of global

equality plans; 2) the reorganisation of both central and local power through the creation of

15

inter-ministry commissions, the setting up of focal points for equality and of other mechanisms

for equality, or the reinforcement of those already existing; 3) the development of models and

indicators for monitoring the implementation of policies with a view to assessing their

sensitivity regarding sex-differentiated needs; 4) and also, awareness-raising actions aimed at

sensitising public opinion and at creating strategic audiences through both the publication of

monitoring guides and of good practices manuals and also by providing training in social

relations between the sexes at all levels of the hierarchy. The question that remains to be

answered is who within the State will be the subject of that reform.

Studies made by Shahra Razavi and Carol Miller (1995a and b) and by Anne Marie

Goetz (1995) for the United Nations on different experiences of incorporation of equality

between the sexes both in specific countries (Bangladesh, Chile, Jamaica, Mali, Morocco and

Uganda) and in some international agencies (the United Nations Development Plan, the World

Bank and the International Labour Organisation) provide some clues that can help us

understand, by comparison, what is happening in other contexts, namely in Portuguese society.

It becomes easier to anticipate the type of difficulties that a strategy of mainstreaming may be

confronted with in the light of other experiences that have already been tested and assessed.

The first point to be stressed is the resistance to change on the part of bureaucratic

organisations; that resistance frequently has its origin in the strong compartmentalisation of the

organisations.

The strategy of establishing focal points for equality in the different state bodies has

proved potentially beneficial in terms of counselling, although it is very obvious that those

appointed rarely have the authority, the prominence and the know-how that would ideally

enable them to sensitise their respective directors regarding sexual inequalities. Portuguese

practice certainly confirms the conclusion drawn by Ravazi and Miller (1995b), as can be seen

in Cruz (2000) and Perista (2000).

The third conclusion suggested by those analyses is that when everything becomes

structural there is a general dilution of responsibility, generating an overall climate of

unaccountability (Bacchi, 1999). When it is centrally announced that institutions and

organisations should revise their practices, what is being implicitly stated is that any external

regulation would be unnecessary and intrusive. This process can also be potentiated by the de-

centralisation of powers. As has been demonstrated, de-centralisation generally becomes a

strong obstacle to the promotion of policies for equality between the sexes. The reason is that

16

local structures render issues of social relations between the sexes even more opaque.9 This is

basically due to the fact that the transference of powers is not accompanied by the necessary

training of those responsible for the in loco implementation of those policies.

Another aspect associated to this is the fact that, during the process of

institutionalisation of equality policies in all bureaucratic practices and routines, its cross-

cutting character can serve as an excuse for governments to give up the legal devices for the

promotion of equality between the sexes.10 Even if they do not go as far as that, they can easily

destroy the basis of their action by using such means as under-budgeting and the reduction of

human resources, these being already overburdened with the double task of providing training

to other sectors and continuing to invest in both research and the planning of new equality

policies. Thus, the position of those legal devices for equality, already extremely vulnerable in

the context of the State apparatus, becomes even more fragile.

As to the great bureaucracies of international organisations, it is easy to understand

that, because they are both strongly hierarchised and fed by very low-intensity democratic

cultures, they tend to be extremely hostile to the type of agenda that might challenge their

current organisational patterns. In fact, they have been faced with enormous difficulties in

trying to apply to their own projects and programmes the principles and strategies they

recommend. What happens in the International Labour Organisation or in the World Bank and

in the United Nations Development Programme is that even when the perspective of sexual

equity is the founding consideration of a specific project, it tends to be lost in the field of

practical implementation, for a number of reasons which have to do with the ingrained logic of

bureaucratic modes of operation and procedures (Razavi and Miller, 1995b). An analysis of

417 development projects promoted within the ambit of different UNO departments identifies

some of the factors that contribute to that situation: 1) lack of attention on the part of highly

positioned officers to the specific activities for the promotion of equality during the phase of

implementation of programmes and projects; 2) insufficient application of the guidelines

concerning the incorporation of equity policies at operational level; 3) a restrictive

interpretation of the scope of the mainstreaming strategy during the planning phase of the

9 Ferreira (1998a) provides an analysis which clearly demonstrates that interpretation in the case of the Portuguese Socialist Party. 10 Jenson (2000) illustrates this on the basis of governmental practices in Canada when the Liberals won the elections in 1993.

17

projects; 4) lack of awareness and understanding of the role of women in different sectors

(Reanda, 1999).

3.3. The empowerment as strategy against the dilution of responsability

The risk that faces governments when they do not implement the measures they

propose is minimum because women do not demand that their promises be kept. That makes it

easy for them to make committments at the highest level of governmental and international

agencies, because rhetoric generally suffices (Goetz, 1995: 56). On the basis of that we can

conclude that feminist influence is easier at the level of international fora, and less effective at

the level of national policies, where the defence of the specific interests of concrete groups

becomes much more relevant. The analysis presented in this paper undoubtedly confirms that.

That leads us to a consideration of the need to create the means to reinforce the

empowerment of women, rendering them capable of making more emancipatory choices that

will lead to a progressive elimination of all forms of inequality. In the current stage of state

reformism, reform becomes the responsibility of those sectors of society capable of intervening

State (Santos, 1998), and women have to organise in order to also become subjects of

mainstreaming, fighting for a politics of presence.

The nature and level of effectiveness of the intervention of civil society organisations

should also be analysed and questioned. Studies made in different countries show that many

projects co-ordinated by those institutions can have the same faults as those promoted by

public agencies: inefficiency, bureaucratic rigidity (often to respond to the demands of donator

agencies) and lack of sensitivity towards local specificities and the needs of beneficiary

populations (Goetz, 1995: 34). That can be easily understood when we think of how difficult it

is to assess the extent to which the interests of the populations are represented and promoted

by organised interests. Only an assessment of the democratic character of the internal operating

processes of civil society organisations as well as of the participation of the populations in the

definition of their objectives can provide an approximate image of the extent of their

representativeness. Inevitably, the better organised groups and those whose voice can make

itself heard are those with better social competencies and a more favourable economic

situation. Thence the need to monitor the activity of those organisations, assessing them in a

18

systematic and rigorous manner, namely regarding the democratic character of their processes

of representation (both internal and external) and of operation.

As I have shown in the case of women’s organisations in Portugal in an earlier article

(Ferreira, 1998a), the NGO lack of autonomy completely subverts their relationship with the

State, for it is the latter which appears as the central reference in the democratic play, and the

one which sets up the political agenda. Given these risks, the role of international NGO is

reinforced. Because their funding is mostly of international origin, they can operate within a

space which is free of constraints and are thus able to find in intergovernmental agencies an

ally against national states and national civic associations that have become passive and

uncritical.

4. Conclusion

In this paper, we tried to equate the terms of the gap that exists between the

proliferation of policies for equality between the sexes and their low level of effectiveness.

First, we identified the pressures towards the enunciation of those policies, and second, we

analysed the obstacles to their implementation. The pressure exerted upon governments by

international fora toward the institutionalisation of equality of opportunities between women

and men in their policies was identified as being the origin of many of the initiatives announced.

All over the world equality policies are being claimed and put forward in response to

‘international commitments’. Second, we tried to understand the reasons why that pressure is

so effective. Based on an analysis of the change from social reformism to state reformism, we

were able to see that the pressure has been strengthened by a series of social transformations

that converge in the direction of the growing globalisation of policies, namely of equality

policies.

Political structures are being transnationalised, as are also social movements, now

seeing the former as ideal strategic interlocutors to pressure governments. The ambiguous and

delicate nature of the issues appertaining to equality policies often leads to the existence of

important discrepancies in the way they are understood by civil society organisations, by

international donors, by governments, or by national political forces. Both the government elite

and state bureaucracies are generally hostile to mainstreaming efforts, seen as political agendas

imposed from the outside with very few internal benefits. That is mainly due to the fact that

19

women are not sufficiently mobilised to demand that promises be kept, but also to the

existence of mutual distrust between governments and civil society. Notwithstanding that

it is an unquestionable fact that the pressure exerted by donors and international women’s

groups is a factor which facilitates mainstreaming and empowerment. Some authors, however,

see that influence as the product of a top-down process of change that is incapable of going

beyond mere rhetoric (Goetz, 1955). It is my view that each specific situation should be

assessed as such. International commitments are not objectionable in themselves, and we have

seen how they can in fact become the basis for legitimising the claims of social movements and

state policies, because they de-politicise those claims. The problem exists when political will is

but a mere attempt to ‘preserve one’s face’.

Largely as a consequence of the formal liberal strategy of privatising public services

and reducing state intervention to a minimum, as well as of the stronger interference of

supranational agencies, the State is de-politicised and social and equality policies become de-

statised (Santos, 1999). Contrary to what happens in social reformism or even in the first phase

of state reformism, in this new context, political transformations are now the responsibility of

those sectors of society with the capacity to intervene in the State. We should therefore ask

which are then the groups who possess or are capable of developing that capacity to influence

equality policies.

Only a mobilised civil society can promote a more equalitarian citizenship, but the

same way we were asking, as far as mainstreaming is concerned, who in the State will be the

subject of State reform, so we must want to know, regarding empowerment, both who is being

represented and which powers are being reinforced. One of the major risks has to do with the

prominent role of civil society organisations in State regulation, given the fact that they

themselves are not subjected to any kind of democratic control and that they often have a

tendency to become ‘professionalised’ and to forget their founding objectives. Besides, when

institutions use empowerment, it tends to be reduced to an individual process, centred upon

entrepreneurial capacity and individual self-confidence, rather than being understood as a

collective process of co-operation aimed at challenging power relations.

The social relations between the sexes permeate the institutional rules and processes

in each different society. The variability that can be found is determined by each of the histories

of those societies, especially as far as the following aspects are concerned: the nature of the

relations between the State and civil society, the nature of women’s activism in civil society,

20

the degree of the State’s autonomy and its legitimating basis. In the present phase of state

reformism, international relations have gained an added weight. Nonetheless, States continue

to be key elements in the process – as interlocutors and co-ordinating agents of internal policy,

as well as intermediaries between local NGO and supranational agencies.

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