Policy & Politics Highlights collection on Gender Policy: free to access from 1st May – 30 June 2025

by Sarah Brown and Allegra Fullerton

Welcome to this quarter’s highlights collection featuring a range of our most popular, recent research on different aspects relating to gender policy. Whether you’re preparing to teach a unit on gender policy or are interested in keeping up to date with the latest research in that area, we hope you will find the articles we’ve featured of interest!

Our first article focuses on gendered violence by incels (involuntary celibates), both online and offline. Much of the analysis to date has focused on what incels mean for our understanding of gender, as well as the role that the internet plays in fostering extremist ideologies. This article instead examines the challenges and policy responses related to incel communities and their role in perpetuating misogynistic violence, focusing on comparisons between Sweden and the UK. Using critical frame analysis, its findings show that there is greater engagement among parliamentary actors in the UK than in Sweden, although there appears to be a clearer policy response in Sweden, where it is addressed as part of strategies to counter violent extremism. Neither country has developed specific policies to tackle the threat posed by incels. Moreover, given its relevance to a range of diverse policy frames, this, to some extent, makes it difficult to create targeted policies. Based on these findings, the article concludes that this absence of policy response is a form of abdication of responsibility by government. This article would be a terrific addition to gender-based violence, feminist theory, political science or policy studies courses.

Shifting the focus to a different aspect of gender policy, our second article entitled Can failure be useful in policymaking? explores a paradox. That is: although equal pay for equal work between women and men is a founding principle of the European Union, enshrined in the Treaties since 1957, the gender pay gap stands at 12.7 per cent in 2021 and has only changed minimally for two decades. So the paradox is that EU’s equal pay policy seems unaffected by its own failure. On the contrary, failure seems to contribute to the legitimisation of the policy.

The article explores this paradox and asks how and why a policy implementation failure framing has been developed in the field of EU equal pay promotion? What is the political function of this framing and what is its impact on the EU policymaking process?

Over the years, the EU equal pay policy has been associated with repeated implementation failure. This failure framing has been particularly present in the debates over the quantitative and symbolic strength of the gender pay gap’s percentage. The article uses process training analysis of its implementation and evaluation, demonstrating that this framing performed important functions. From a policymaking perspective, the implementation failure framing allowed the gender equality policy community to keep the issue firmly on the EU agenda. On the basis of these findings, the article considers if this type of failure framing can continue to produce results in an increasingly polarised context such as that of gender equality. This article would be well-suited to include in courses that cover EU policy-making, implementation, policy processes and gender.

Our final article in this collection examines the potential of feminist democratic innovations in policy and institutional politics. Through content analysis of municipal plans and interviews with key actors, the article examines feminist democratic innovations in the policy and politics of Barcelona’s local government from 2015 to 2023. The study emphasises the role of feminist democratic innovations in transforming governance and promoting intersectional justice. It notes that feminist politics can enhance democracy by including marginalised voices and fostering participatory governance. The supportive political context and critical actors have been crucial in advancing feminist institutional politics in Barcelona, particularly in response to crises like the 2008 economic slowdown. The article concludes by arguing that feminist institutional politics at the local level contribute to democratising policy and politics in innovative ways, in particular encouraging inclusive intersectionality and participatory discourses and practices. This article would be an excellent addition to courses on urban studies, gender politics or public policy.

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We hope you enjoyed these articles. Don’t forget, they’re free to access until 30 June by clicking on the links below!:

Bengtsson Meuller, E., and Evans, E. (2024). Comparing policy responses to incels in Sweden and the UK. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024), available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000045>

Jacquot, S. (2024). Can failure be useful in policymaking? The case of EU equal pay policy. Policy & Politics 52, 2, 200-218, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000031>

Caravantes, P., and Lombardo, E. (2024). Feminist democratic innovations in policy and politics. Policy & Politics 52, 2, 177-199, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000009>