GENDER AND THE HIDDEN LIFE OF INSTITUTIONS
Pre-publication version submitted to Public Administration for publication in vol 91,
no 3, pp 599-615.
LOUISE CHAPPELL AND GEORGINA WAYLEN
New Institutionalism has shown that the ‘rules of the game’ are crucial to structuring
political life in terms of constraining and enabling political actors and influencing
political outcomes. A limitation of this approach however has been its overemphasis on
formal rules, with much less attention paid to how informal rules work alongside and in
conjunction with formal institutions to shape actors and outcomes. This article
contributes to an emerging literature that highlights the importance of informal
institutions by bringing into focus one element that has been hidden in these debates – the
influence of gender norms and practices on the operation and interaction between formal
and informal institutions. It highlights some of the key benefits of a gender analysis for
understanding political institutions in both their formal and informal guise and considers
some of the challenges in building a research agenda that requires new methods and
techniques of inquiry.
INTRODUCTION
Improving our understanding of institutions - what they are and how they operate - has
long been a key task facing many social scientists. New Institutionalism (which currently
includes at least four variants - rational choice, historical, sociological and discursive
institutionalism) has led this very broad field since the 1980s (March and Olsen 1984;
North 1990; Hall and Taylor 1996; Thelen 1999; Rhodes et al 2006; Schmidt 2008).
Most scholars now agree that institutions are the 'rules of the game' – the rules, norms and
practices - that structure political, social and economic life, even if each variant of New
Institutionalism (NI) differs in its explanations of institutional creation, structure and
agency, and power (Mahoney and Thelen 2010). Although remarkable strides have been
made in institutional analysis, much remains to be done, for example in understanding
not just institutional continuity but also institutional change. One lacuna in many
accounts is any understanding of institutions as gendered and how this impacts on their
design, evolution and outcomes. Indeed although NI, and especially its historical variant,
may have been attuned to the ways in which institutions distribute power unevenly
between groups (Hall and Taylor 1996, p. 941), no attention has been given to the gender
dimension of this. This deficiency detracts from the explanatory power of NI. However,
scholars participating in the 'institutional turn' within gender scholarship are now
rectifying this problem (Mackay and Waylen 2009; Krook and Mackay 2011). A broadly
defined ‘feminist institutionalism’ (FI) has explicitly critiqued existing institutionalisms
as well as utilized tools of gender and of institutional analysis (most commonly
influenced by historical institutionalism) to improve our understanding of institutional
design, processes and change.
This paper engages with this new gendered approach to institutions but seeks to
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add to it, and to the NI literature more generally, by emphasizing the often ‘hidden’
aspects of political institutions – in particular, the informal aspects of executive,
legislative, bureaucratic, legal and constitutional arenas - to highlight the influence
informal rules and practices have on institutional design and outcomes. While informal
rules and norms have long been identified in NI as central to institutional processes and
outcomes, Mackay et al (2010, p. 576) are correct in pointing out that ‘both the specific
influence of informal institutions and the interplay between formal and informal
institutions are often under-theorized and underplayed in empirical studies’ in both
gendered and non-gendered institutionalist analysis in political science. Therefore by
bringing into focus informal rules and practices, and how they are gendered, this paper
does three things: it contributes to the NI literature a more nuanced understanding of
institutions, for example through the introduction of concepts such as gender regime.
Second by overtly recognizing the formal and informal and their interaction, it also
contributes to the development of FI; and finally it improves both FI's and NI's
understandings of why the introduction of new formal rules do not always result in the
outcomes intended and desired by institutional designers in different contexts. Adding a
gender power dimension to NI not only reveals who has the power to make institutional
design decisions but also why some unexpected outcomes occur and why some reforms
are more difficult to achieve than others.
To fulfill these tasks, this article answers a number of questions. The first section
addresses the question of what is gender and why is it necessary to take a gendered
approach to institutions? The second part of the article asks what is the relationship
between gender and formal and informal institutions? It also explores what a focus on
gender will add to an understanding of the hidden life of institutions. Finally, the last
section considers how we might operationalize a gendered approach to formal and
especially informal rules and practices through a case study of civil service recruitment to
the United Kingdom (UK) core executive, before exploring the wider implications for a
new research agenda. Addressing all these questions is not an easy task. Informal rules
and practices are notoriously difficult to unravel and research. This is particularly the
case in relation to the gender dimensions of such rules because these are often the status
quo; they are the unquestioned ways of operating seen as natural and immutable, if
participants are even aware of them. But it is also because some of the research methods
needed to uncover the links between formal and informal rules and gender are not always
ones political scientists are comfortable with and can present difficulties of access and
confidentiality. As Radnitz notes, studying informal institutions ‘requires political
scientists to travel outside of their “comfort zone,” and to adopt the working
assumptions, theoretical approaches, and methodologies of fields such as sociology and
anthropology’ (2011, p. 352).
UNDERSTANDING GENDER
What does the term gender mean in relation to political institutions? How is it manifested
through institutions? What does it contribute to an understanding of institutional power?
According to Beckwith, gender emerges:
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from stereotypes about male and female behavior; from characteristics and
behaviors conventionally associated with women and men; from normative
assumptions about appropriate behaviors of men and women; from assumptions
about biological difference; and from social structures of power and difference
(2010, p. 160).
Gender can be seen to operate within institutions in two senses: nominally and
substantively. The nominal dimension, or what Goetz (2007) defines as ‘gender capture’,
results from men’s historical and ongoing dominance of positions of power in political
organizations in greater numbers than women (Witz and Savage 1992). Over time women
have challenged male dominance by entering the state in large numbers. The mere
presence of women in institutional spaces has been disruptive because they have drawn
attention to the extent of male control and revealed some of hidden expectations that exist
within these spaces (Lovenduski 2005, p. 147). However, even if women reached parity
with men in all political, legal and bureaucratic positions, there is no guarantee that
institutions would operate differently. As Hooper (2001, p. 52) notes, ‘swapping female
for male bodies in traditionally masculine arenas does little to disrupt either the
symbolism or practices of the gender order’; because of the operation of more deeply
embedded substantive gender dimensions (Savage and Witz 1992), or a gender ‘bias’ that
‘seep[s] into supposedly impartial or gender neutral arrangements’ (Goetz 2007, p. 47) of
political institutions. Lovenduski provides a vivid example of how this gender bias
operates in the UK Parliament (and more so than in many institutions):
Requirements for masculine dress codes, provision for hanging up one’s sword
but not for looking after one’s child, admiration for demagoguery and conflict,
adversarial styles of debate, a chamber whose acoustics favour loud voices, the
frequent use of military metaphors, the regularly reported experience of women
MP’s barred by staff from ‘Member only’ areas are all manifestations of the
gender regime of the UK parliament (2005, p. 147).
Gender bias emerges from a set of social norms founded on accepted ideas about
femininity and masculinity. These norms are usually (but not ineluctably) linked to a
particular sex: the former are assigned to women and the latter to men. Masculinity is
associated with ‘positive’ qualities including ‘rationality, autonomy, prudence, strength,
power, logic, boundary setting, control, and competitiveness’ (Hooper 2001, p. 44)
whereas femininity is its binary opposite, associated with passivity, nature, care, emotion
and irrationality. Both masculinity and femininity come in plural forms, taking on
different hues depending upon the particular institutional setting, and of course,
intersecting with other dimensions such as race, class and sexuality. Across state
institutions we find various forms of femininity and masculinity at work, with some
forms of the latter operating hegemonically. Connell highlights examples of hegemonic
masculinity in ‘the physical aggression of front line troops or police, the authoritative
masculinity of commanders and the calculative rationality of bureaucrats’ (1987, pp.128-
9). While femininity is expressed differently – the caring nurse, the compliant secretary,
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the ‘bossy’ headmistress – it is always subordinate to the prevailing hegemonic
masculinity. Nevertheless, feminine norms are still powerful in shaping institutional
settings. Feminine traits provide the ‘other’ without which masculinities could not be
defined (Lovenduski 2005, p. 51; Duerst-Lahti 2008, p.179). Masculinity (and its
associated norms) reflects what is valued, while femininity operates ‘a residual category,
a foil or Other for masculinity to define itself against’ (Hooper 2001, p. 43).
As social constructions, gender norms do not determine that women will act in a
feminine way or men the reverse. However, political actors, traditionally men, have acted
as if sex and gender are mapped on to each other, leading to the establishment of a
‘gendered logic of appropriateness’ within institutional arenas (Chappell 2006). This
logic prescribes (as well as proscribes) ‘acceptable’ masculine and feminine forms of
behaviour, rules and values for men and women within institutions. Men, operating
within a hegemonic normative code, have been thought to possess the appropriate skills,
knowledge and temperament to design and maintain the institutions of the state, while
most women – assumed to be irrational, fragile and dependant - have tended to be
relegated to supporting roles as low grade clerks, cleaners, tea ladies, and wives – but
again located differently according to their racial and class positions (Lovenduski 2005,
p. 147).
The institutional dominance of particular forms of masculinity has taken us from
seeing gender as operating only at an individual level, to viewing it as regime complete
with ‘rules, procedures, discourses and practices’; a regime in which, ‘many men are
comfortable and most women are not’ (Lovenduski 2005, p. 147). In Connell’s (2002, p.
7) view, this regime reflects the patterning of, and interaction between, four sets of
gender relations including: the gender relations of power; the gender division of labour;
the gender dimension of emotion and human relations and the gender dimension of
culture and symbolism. Although analytically distinct, in practice these dimensions ‘are
found interwoven in actual relationships and transactions’ (Connell 2002, p. 7). However,
as Lovenduski’s work suggests, it is important not to see gender power regimes operating
alone. Gender intersects and combines with other structural power relations including
race, sexuality and class to influence outcomes (see Weldon 2008).
Acknowledging the existence of a gender regime is important because it provides
new insights into the power dimension of political institutions. It draws our attention to
the asymmetry of institutional power relations (Kenny 2007, p. 96) and makes us look at
how and what resources are distributed and who gets to do the distributing. Political
systems have been constructed upon the exclusion or enforced absences of women and
the feminine while ‘[t]hat associated with males has received a disproportionate share of
the resources and deemed more valuable than that which is associated with females’
(Duerst-Lahti 2008, p. 182). This seems to be the case regardless of the nature of the
political regime or culture. As gender and politics researchers have documented, a
general pattern exists across all the regions of the world; in Latin America, Africa, Asia,
the Middle East as well as in Europe, North America and Australia, entrenched gender
stereotypes and control of political resources have worked to privilege (certain) men and
disadvantage most women (see for example Chappell 2002, Molyneux and Razavi 2002,
Waylen 2007, Tripp et al 2009, McBride and Mazur 2010). This relationship of
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advantage and disadvantage directly influences political and policy outcomes. In all parts
of the world, women continue to earn on average less than men, have less control of
capital, reduced rates of political representation, and suffer from (the lack of protection
from) male violence (for details see United Nations Women 2011).
Masculine power advantage has been naturalized – seen as the way things should
be – and ‘has been capable of setting the terms of normal, just, and proper arrangements
for political and social power’ (Duerst-Lahti 2008, p. 165). This naturalization has not
occurred through a conscious strategy on behalf of all men to dominate all women. As
Hooper argues: ‘men gain access to power and privilege not by virtue of their anatomy
but through their cultural association with masculinity’ (2001, p. 41). Nor has the
naturalization of gender power relations come about through the exercise of brute force,
but through a subtle accumulation of ‘often-small advantages across a host of different
institutional spaces’ (Burns 2005, p. :138). Men’s access to power has been reinforced
over time through ‘constantly repeated processes of exclusion’ of women (Lovenduski
2005, p. 50), and through organizational rules, routines, policies and discourses that have
rendered ‘women, along with their needs and interests, invisible’ (Acker 1992, p. 567;
Hawkesworth 2005, p. 147).
Many women (and men who fall outside hegemonic boundaries, like homosexual
men) have sought to disrupt these power relations by first identifying then challenging
the gender foundations of taken-for-granted rules and practices within legislative,
bureaucratic and legal arenas. For instance, feminist activists have drawn attention to and
disrupted the gender dimensions of: recruitment practices of political parties which
privileges favoured sons (Kenny 2011); the operation of discriminatory behaviour in
legislatures to block women’s access to leadership positions (Lovenduski 2005; Mackay
2008); the different career opportunities for men and women in the bureaucracy leaving
the latter languishing in less important positions (Stivers 1993; Chappell 2002) and legal
and constitutional arrangements which reinforce the public/private distinction in areas
such as reproductive rights (Dobrowlosky and Hart 2003; Waylen 2007). However,
gender norms have proven to be very ‘sticky’. Challengers of existing gender logics of
appropriateness have often been treated as ‘deviants’ and punished through acts of
censure, ridicule or harassment. With the weight of history on their side, defenders of the
gender status quo – those advantaged by existing power arrangements - have often
defeated attempts to subvert the existing regime. The intersection between the gender
regime and other structures of power further compound the challenge for those seeking
change and improved outcomes.
But what these studies also reveal is that ‘crisis tendencies’ in gender regimes can
emerge due to their inherent instability and internal contradictions also exist (Connell
1987, pp. 159-60). For example, the advancement of principles of universal rights, built
on masculine foundations, opens up new discourses for furthering women’s claims to
citizenship, while changes in global capitalism challenge the traditional gender division
of labour leading to the education and employment of more women in roles previously
deemed male-only domains. These external and internal institutional pressures for change
have not resulted in ‘an automatic disruption of the institutional order of power’ but they
have made it increasingly vulnerable (Connell 1987, p. 160). What this suggests is that