Theorising Shifting Public Governance from a Feminist Perspective

This chapter outlines the theoretical and conceptual approach through which this book analyses transformations of public governance and the ways they shape and interact with gender equality policy. The chapter provides new frameworks and tools to theorise public governance by turning to mainstream debates about governance as well as to existing feminist approaches to governance. By bridging these discussions, the chapter provides stronger conceptual tools for feminist analysis of governance and brings a gender perspective to key concepts used in mainstream governance scholarship. The chapter proposes to study public governance through bridging post-structuralism, feminist political economy and feminist institutionalism. Each framework sheds light on a different aspect of changing forms of governance, and they complement each other. The chapter also introduces the three key concepts used in the book: economisation, depoliticisation and gender equality–economy relations. In addition to gendering these two concepts, already circulating in analyses of governance, the chapter develops the idea of gender equality–economy relations as a further analytical tool. Shifts in public governance play an essential role in reworking gender equality–economy relations.