Latest articles from our group! From Feminist democratic innovations in policy and politics to the regulation of surrogacy across Western Europe, and resilience and gender-structural change in universities.
Check out the latest publications of our research group! The first one, by Paloma Caravantes and Emanuela Lombardo, examines the potential of feminist democratic innovations in policy and institutional politics with reference to the local government of Barcelona between 2015 and 2023. The second one, by Lucrecia Rubio Grundell, analyses the evolution of the regulation of surrogacy across Western Europe from the perspective of Gendered Morality Politics. Finally, the third article, by María Bustelo, reflects on her experience in the Horizon 2020 SUPERA project, aimed at fostering institutional and structural change in academic and research institutions through the implementation of Gender Equality Plans.
Caravantes, Paloma & Emanuela Lombardo (2024) Feminist democratic innovations in policy and politics. Policy & Politics Open Access https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000009
This article examines the potential of feminist democratic innovations in policy and institutional politics. It examines how feminist democratic innovations can be conceptualised and articulated in local institutions. Combining theories on democratic governance, feminist democracy, social movements, municipalism, decentralisation, gender equality policies and state feminism, it conceptualises feminist democratic innovations in policy and politics as innovations oriented at (a) transforming knowledge, (b) transforming policymaking and public funding, (c) transforming institutions, and (d) transforming actors’ coalitions. Through analysis of municipal plans and interviews with key actors, the article examines feminist democratic innovations in the policy and politics of Barcelona’s local government from 2015 to 2023. Emerging from the mobilisation of progressive social movements after the 2008 economic crisis, the findings uncover a laboratory of feminist municipal politics, following the election of a new government and self-proclaimed feminist mayor. Critical actors and an enabling political context play a pivotal role in the adoption of this feminist institutional politics. The article concludes by arguing that feminist institutional politics at the local level contribute to democratising policy and politics in innovative ways, in particular encouraging inclusive intersectionality and participatory discourses and practices.
Keywords: feminist politics; institutional feminism; local government; public policy and gender; democracy; democratic innovation; municipalism; Barcelona
Rubio Grundell, Lucrecia (2024) Regulating surrogacy across Western Europe: A usual case of (gendered) morality politics?. Comparative European Politics, 1-24. https://rdcu.be/dylxR
The regulation of surrogacy across Western Europe displays the overwhelming prevalence of a restrictive status quo, with only a few states having moved towards greater permissiveness. However, we know little about the determinants of such regulation from a comparative perspective. This article fills this gap, by mapping the variation in the regulation of surrogacy across Western Europe and determining whether the explanations offered by the morality politics literature to the attendant variation in the regulation of abortion, prostitution and assisted reproductive technologies also explain it, or, rather, surrogacy policy has its own determinants. It concludes that, while the factors that explain the variation in the permissiveness of the regulation of abortion, prostitution and assisted reproduction technologies across Western Europe also apply to surrogacy, their specific combination in the latter is unlike in any of the former. Hence, surrogacy policy has its own determinants, which require further research. In doing so, the article adds to the emerging comparative analysis of surrogacy policies across Western Europe from a morality politics perspective, which is unprecedented, and, in turn, to the literature on morality politics, by confronting it to an issue that questions several of its established conclusions.
Keywords: Surrogacy policy; Western Europe; Morality politics; Abortion; Prostitution; Assisted reproductive technologies.
Bustelo, María (2023) Resilience and gender-structural change in universities: How bottom-up approaches can leverage transformation when top-level management support fails, Sociologica 17(2): 17–36. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/17787.
This article is a reflection on my involvement in SUPERA (2018–2022), a project funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, that aims at fostering institutional and structural change in academic and research institutions for integrating gender equality through the implementation of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs). For that, I take on my experience at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), which was both European coordinator and implementing partner in the consortium, during a period marked by global challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Each of the six SUPERA implementing institutions also faced local and national institutional changes of different kinds and natures, obliging, both for each partner and for the consortium, an adaptation and revision of strategies and former plans, whilst also resulting in a rich mutual learning experience. Presenting the theoretical bases of the European Structural Change Approach first, I analyse the different situations in which Higher Education and research related institutions participate as implementing partners in European structural change projects, which have been funded by the European Commission under specific calls since the 7th Framework Research Program. I reflect on the different responses given by the project Consortium and teams, and, in the third part of the article, focus on the UCM experience, and more concretely on the changing dynamics of top-management support and bottom-up strategies during the project. Therefore, I use the case of the SUPERA for illustrating and comparing different forms of institutional commitment to gender-related structural change and transformation, and the UCM for exploring the dynamics between top-level support and bottom-up approaches, arguing that these should be balanced and mutually supportive, and highlighting how one or the other might act as a substituting force in the absence of the other.
Keywords: Gender structural change; gender equality plans; gender equality in academia & research; European research projects; Spanish Universities.