Gender equality machineries as critical actors in gender mainstreaming across the globe

Summer Forester and Amy G. Mazur

Chapter 8 in Research Handbook on Gender Mainstreaming, 2026, pp 98-109 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: As the major vector for promoting gender mainstreaming (GM) in governments across the globe, gender equality machineries (GEMs) and their civil servant agents – femocrats – have the potential to play a crucial role in promoting gender equality at societal levels through public policy and the bureaucracy. The degree to which these state bureaucracies successfully pursue GM is mixed, often dependent on state interests and whether the government in power is democratic or autocratic. Research on “state feminism,” mostly focused on the Global North, has identified these bureaucratic structures and their civil service actors as the central engines of GM. This chapter seeks to systematically bring in research on the Global South and show that GEMs’ role in the complex processes of GM can be both positive, as “catalysts in the chemical reaction of gender equality policy,” and negative, through “gender washing” and “policy evaporation.”

Keywords: Gender Equality Machineries; GEMs; Critical Actors; State Feminism; Global South; Global North; Gender Mainstreaming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035353415
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