Theorizing Feminist Policy

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Abstract
Theorizing Feminist Policy intersects empirical feminist policy analysis with non‐feminist policy studies to define and contribute to the new field of Feminist Comparative Policy. The book first identifies this new area of study, showing how it dialogues with Gender and Politics, Comparative Public Policy, Comparative Politics, and Public Policy Studies. Next, the book seeks to strengthen one of the weakest links of this new area, the study of explicitly feminist government action. In the remaining nine chapters, feminist policy is mapped out as a relatively new public policy sector, with eight sub‐sectors—blueprint, political representation, equal employment, reconciliation, family law, reproductive rights, sexuality and violence, and public service delivery. A qualitative and comparative framework is developed to analyse the profiles and styles of feminist policy in post‐industrial democracies in 27 different cases of feminist policy formation across 13 different countries. The initial empirical study makes the case for feminist policy as a new sector of state action, concluding tentatively that successful feminist policy formation is a subtle combination of feminist strategic partnerships, non‐feminist allies, institutions, culture, and international influences. These tentative findings also shed new light on the perennial questions of Comparative Politics and Policy: do politics, institutions, national policy style, sector, institutions, or culture matter the most in determining policy processes and outcomes? The book finishes by suggesting the next steps in developing comparative theories of feminist policy formation. Theorizing Feminist Policy, therefore, goes beyond just describing the dimensions of feminist policy from existing literature, it seeks to systematically contribute to comparative theories of how the contemporary post‐industrial state has taken on social change at the beginning of the twenty‐first century.

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