Gender Equality: How Bait-and-Switch Male Dominance Undermines Gender Equality Policymaking

Abstract

This chapter examines how bait-and-switch male dominance undermines gender equality policymaking through the examination of the most prominent issue in both countries, domestic violence. Johnson argues that informal politics confounds each of the policy stages used within feminist policy studies, illustrated through the comparison of Russia and Iceland. The chapter shows how issue framing is often accomplished through style-switching (the modulation of language for different audiences and contexts) and “speaking in code” (encrypting the problem within language about other problems), and getting policy adopted and implemented requires informal rule changes. Evaluating policy is muddled by the politics of statistics, in which both sides manipulate their data, and feminists, boxed in as they are, can be more successful using “secret handshakes” with elites than formal channels.