Gender inequality by design: does successful implementation of childcare policy deliver gender-just outcomes?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The intractability of complex forms of gender inequality and the normalisation of gender equality policies on public policy agendas continue to challenge feminist research and activism concerned with gender-just outcomes. Through integrative multi-level analysis of policy design-implementation-outcomes building on the feminist policy implementation framework, this article illuminates how dominant discursive framing supports divergent policy approaches by different actors within state-institutional sites. Based on a decade of childcare policy implementation in Poland, the analysis shows that a shared family well-being frame is deployed by political actors to design and implement contrasting models for childcare. These have profound implications for the attainment of gender-just outcomes by sometimes challenging, but more frequently, reconstituting gender hierarchies. The policy design-implementation-outcome lens highlights the centrality of gender throughout the policy process and thus helps account for the persistence of inequalities through their construction and re-construction. It also suggests that, politically, the policy effort can be deployed towards alternative processes and policies, and thus towards the attainment of gender-just outcomes.