The Politics of Feminist Knowledge Transfer

This book explores the politics of feminist knowledge transfer, offering a critical reflection on the practice of gender expertise and gender training. It brings together analytical and theoretical work on feminist knowledge transfer with revealing experiences grounded in the practice of gender training and gender expertise. These processes are explored in a reflective and analytical way, bringing what has up to now been primarily a practice-based debate into the academic arena. Overall, the book aims to critically reflect on the politics of feminist knowledge transfer and the relationship between gender expertise, gender training, and broader processes of feminist transformation.

Feminism means engaging with power. Feminists have rallied against patriarchal power in order to undermine it, but they also have come together to empower themselves and challenge existing arrangements. Indeed, like all human agents, women have wielded power in various feminized roles throughout history. What is new in the contemporary era is the fact that there is not just women’s power, but feminist power. That is, power that has been generated from, and is wielded through, feminist activism.

Feminist knowledge transfer and gender mainstreaming are deeply interrelated. Gender mainstreaming requires that institutional and organizational cultures undergo changes to include a gender perspective — based on gender knowledge — into all public policies and processes (Council of Europe, 1998). However, policymakers generally do not have sufficient gender awareness and competence to introduce a gender perspective into all policies, and they tend to work within institutional structures that are mostly gender-blind (Roggeband and Verloo, 2006). Gender training, taken here to mean training commissioned by public institutions and targeted at public administration personnel on how to mainstream gender into their work, is a key process of knowledge transfer (Pauly et al., 2009)¹. Not all gender trainings are necessarily processes of feminist knowledge transfer, however. While “gender” knowledge transfer refers to gender as an analytical concept concerning the socially constructed relation between women and men, the “feminist” component of training includes a “goal”, a target for social change. This is of “challenging and changing women’s subordination to men” (Ferree, 2006, p. 6). In feminist, rather than only gender processes of knowledge transfer, change is not expected to come smoothly but rather involves conflict and contestation.

Private sector funding for gender equality initiatives is a growing phenomenon worldwide. To date, however, this issue has received relatively little attention in feminist literature. Our aim here is to map the contours of such funding and draw out the implications thereof for discussions of feminist knowledge transfer. While existing literature on the subject, as outlined below, offers a feminist critique of private sector involvement in gender equality, we suggest that our approach is original as it engages explicitly from the perspectives of those conducting feminist knowledge transfer. Drawing on the experiences of the authors and accounts from interviews, we set out the opportunities and challenges created by the increasing privatization of gender equality funding. By the “private sector”, we mean medium to large enterprises operating at national and multinational levels.

In this chapter, we reflect on feminist expertise and knowledge in relation to feminist engagement with the broad field of international development and development institutions, in particular. Gender mainstreaming is one prominent practice of such feminist engagement, and we look at it as a primary vehicle for feminist knowledge transfer. Whereas gender mainstreaming envisioned policy transformations and, in addition, societal transformation, there has been widespread disappointment about actual practice not living up to this transformative promise (Eerdewijk and Davids, 2014; Lombardo et al., 2010; True and Parisi, 2013; see also Cornwall et al., 2004; 2007; Sweetman and Porter, 2005; Sweetman, 2012). This chapter reflects on how gender and change are conceptualized, framed, and transferred in both the process of gender mainstreaming and in feminist critiques of it. In line with the Introduction to this book, we conceptualize this knowledge transfer as an inherently political and contested process. Its political character becomes apparent in processes of meaning giving that are not neutral, but loaded with power. We conceptualize these power dimensions with the Foucauldian concept of “governmentalities”, in order to capture how they seek to govern conduct, and how this is informed by knowledge, rationalities, and belief systems. We draw attention to how gender and change are not pre-given and stable terms in this process, but are the very site of the political and power struggle over meaning giving.

The passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and subsequent resolutions launched the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda to mainstream gender into matters of conflict and peace building. 1 Advocates hail gender mainstreaming as a window of opportunity for global feminist knowledge transfer in order to promote the transformation of gender relations, particularly in post-conflict societies. Critics have challenged this optimism, arguing that gender works as a Trojan horse, whereby gender mainstreaming initiatives are used instrumentally to legitimize liberal peace building. These two metaphors have come to dominate the debate on “feminist knowledge transfer” in the WPS agenda. So far, most feminist critiques have focused either on the inadequate translation and implementation of the WPS agenda or on the problematic tendencies of the underlying (liberal) feminism, such as de-politicization or bureaucratization (for an overview, see Ferguson, 2014, p. 2). I argue that we need to ask more fundamental questions regarding ways of conceptualizing the circulation of feminist knowledges.

Gender training is widely seen as necessary for non-gender experts to be able to conduct gender impact analysis and to suggest adequate measures for gender mainstreaming (Council of Europe, 1998). Gender training is also considered key to minimizing the risk of resistance in terms of the implementation of gender equality policies (Halford, 1992). Major training efforts have subsequently been common in connection with gender mainstreaming initiatives. The heavy reliance on gender training as a driver for change in gender mainstreaming strategies, together with reports of difficulties in achieving envisioned policy and organizational changes, raises questions about the potential of gender training as a policy instrument for implementing gender equality policies.

Tackling gender inequality in higher education institutions implies specific challenges for the politics of feminist knowledge transfer. Such institutions tend to reproduce gender inequalities in their own structures and functioning as well as in the process of knowledge production. For this reason, both aspects are addressed by gender mainstreaming, as has been the case as part of the EU-funded structural change projects undertaken under the FP7 and Horizon 2020 framework programmes. Higher education has been a key area of concern for the EU’s gender mainstreaming strategy. Gender mainstreaming, moreover, has been promoted at the impetus of the European Union (EU) (see, e.g., the Roadmap for Equality between women and men, 2006–2010; and the Strategy for Equality between women and men, 2010–2015). Teresa Rees defines gender mainstreaming as “the promotion of gender equality through its systematic integration into all systems and structures, into all policies, processes, and procedures, into the organization and its culture, into ways if seeing and doing” (Rees, 2005). Its implementation requires the work of “gender mainstreaming advocates” (Hafner-Burton and Pollack, 2000, p. 440) struggling to ensure that their own institution leads on gender equality policies.

As set out in the introductory chapter, this book is an attempt to offer a critical reflection on the politics of feminist knowledge transfer, bringing together analytical and theoretical work on gender expertise and gender training. Grounded in both the theory of feminist knowledge transfer and experiences of gender training and gender expertise, the chapters elaborate on emerging bodies of literature to advance further what have, to date, been primarily practice-oriented debates. This book articulates an understanding of processes of feminist knowledge transfer as pursuing a transformative agenda, rooted in a structural approach to gender inequality. Feminist knowledge is framed as situated, depending on the standpoints of different knowers. These standpoints do not only result from different disciplinary backgrounds and status. They also reflect different knowledge transfer scenarios — for example, EU member states and countries of the Global South. This book also articulates an explicit acknowledgement of the political nature of the contexts (cultural, institutional, or organizational) in which this knowledge is being transferred and of the potential for contestation. All chapters embrace a reflexive approach, adopting varying degrees of critique towards the biases and limitations this transfer process can reveal. Indeed, the very notion of transfer has been placed under scrutiny, in order to challenge hierarchies of knowledges and place increased emphasis on the dynamic and participatory nature of such a process. For this reason, this book also addresses resistances and contestation as inherent to transferring knowledge from a feminist perspective.