Conclusions

This concluding chapter combines this book’s main theoretical insights and empirical findings into three key arguments. The first relates to the way shifts in public governance link with other elements of the recent gender equality policy backlash, constituting a silent backlash. The second concerns the ambivalent relationship between the way public governance reforms co-opt gender equality policies and actors and how these actors may strategically use governance trends and reforms to strengthen their foothold. The third relates to the way public governance shapes what this book calls gender equality–economy relations and under what conditions gender equality policy can participate in transforming these relations. The chapter concludes by considering insights regarding the conceptualisation of gender equality–economy relations on feminist research in other fields, working to unfold the complex yet increasingly intimate relations between feminism and the capitalist economy.