URL: http://www.bpb.de/veranstaltungen/dokumentation/130140/forum-2-social-politics

Forum 2: Social Politics

The route to gender mainstreaming follows a number of social policy pathways, from German laws that included gender impact assessments before their passage to Swedish family policies that one psychologist hopes will reduce male violence and improve childhood development.

The route to gender mainstreaming follows a number of social policy pathways, from German laws that included gender impact assessments before their passage to Swedish family policies that one psychologist hopes will reduce male violence and improve childhood development.

Social policy, whether it manifests itself through laws or new approaches to civil society, is the way forward in advancing the goals of gender mainstreaming. A pair of panellists who looked at the issue from both top-down and bottom-up approaches gave conference attendees an indication of how gender mainstreaming goals can be advanced, and assessing how much work still remains.

Lars Jalmert, a child psychologist who studies family issues at Stockholm University, told his audience that rethinking men´s roles within the family and within society can result in less violence and better children, provided there is social support for such a change. Jalmert said that while Sweden´s family policies enjoyed a good reputation within the European Union, "there´s still lots and lots and lots and lots to be done."

His research shows that fathers, whose role in childhood development has long been seen as crucial for boys, also have a significant impact on how girls grow up, and that the benefits work both ways. Girls with strong paternal influences will grow up less distant from men, reducing misunderstanding and distrust between genders, and fathers who spend time with their daughters will help redefine that familial role within a society. Jalmert noted that young children demand immediate emotional responses to problems, and theorized that men who are exposed to this will be more emotionally open and accepting.

Such openness and acceptance would help reduce male violence, because men in nurturing roles as fathers would dwell less on the notion that they are entitled to "respect" and "honor," which he characterized as notions central to the male prerogative of power in societies where gender issues are still unbalanced, that is to say, all of them. "Gender never comes alone – it always comes with power," Jalmert said. "Many men take it for granted that they should have power over women. This leads to violence that has to end." Practical approaches to this societal transformation include Sweden´s liberal family leave policies for both mothers and fathers. Depending on the outcome of next week´s elections, already progressive laws may be altered even further to ensue new fathers get up to half the 13 months of family leave granted to parents, instead of the two months they are now guaranteed. Also, social policymakers have an obligation to back up their legislation, he said. "In this male-dominated world, it´s important that important men take a role against men´s violence, and in favor of strong families," he said. "If a top male says these things, other males listen."

Marianne Weg took a different approach to gender mainstreaming as a social policy question. Weg, now on sabbatical from the Social Ministry of the German state of Hesse, where she was head of section for gender mainstreaming, proposed that mainstreaming will only take place when the organisations responsible for social policy - legislators, ministerial departments and the judicial system – learn what gender mainstream requires. "Conditions have not yet been created to make this happen," she said. "Gender mainstreaming will only progress in an organisation that is always learning."

While she noted that Germany now has 34 pilot projects geared toward gender mainstreaming in social policy formulation, it is still too early to assess their results. However, she said a national law governing policies for senior citizens was the first piece of legislation to include a gender impact assessment as it was drafted.

But policy still lags behind social conditions, Weg said. "Discrimination grows faster than law," she said. Weg´s basic contention echoed that of Jalmert, because, as she said, even in her work on employment policies, she was aware that "a problem cannot be solved by the same thinking that caused the problem in the first place." Rethinking the "distribution of opportunity" that created gender-based employment problems is no small task, she said, adding that Germany lagged behind more progressive EU countries and that gender issues had not been addressed in decades of social policymaking. "It´s an obligation, but a practical application is still far off," she said. "Gender mainstreaming is not just about equal rights, but about qualitative work in social policy." Too often, Weg said policymakers see progress in gender mainstreaming as a matter of quantitative measures, of quotas and numbers and bottom-line results. For gender mainstreaming to truly progress, she said social policy must reach a level where its messages are really effective in reaching all people.

"But in spite of its usefulness, gender mainstreaming in social policy, employment policy and education remains very difficult," she said. That is, creating conditions where both men and women are receptive to a radical redistribution of opportunities – in one´s work, in one´s family life and in one´s education- is no small step for a society to take. "Openness for both men and women questions individual conceptions of one´s own life."

That rethinking, like Jalmert´s endorsement of a new approach to fatherhood, requires considerable effort and change – which will lead to immediate resistance. One member of the audience suggested that Germany´ heritage, with its 19th century Bismarckian conceptions of social welfare still intact, will make gender mainstreaming harder to achieve in her own country. If neither Jalmert nor Weg laid out a path to completely realized gender mainstreaming in their discussions of its place in social policy, they did agree that the self-sustaining foundation of gender discrimination must be undermined to make real equality exist both in law and in society. "Gender and sexual discrimination is based on power, and that perpetuates and reinforces itself," Weg said, echoing her Swedish counterpart´s analysis of the cycle of male violence. Knowing the nature of one´s opponent, it seems, is the way forward for turning goals into reality. "I myself would very much like a genderless society," Jalmert said. "I think that´s a lot of where the solution lies. Men would have much to gain from gender equality. They could enjoy better lives with women."

Gunna Starck, a member of the Copenhagen department of Denmark´s national Red Green Alliance, said that while the speakers´contentions that society needs to change itself are valid, she believed that political backing is the way to realize those aims. "You have to have a central authority to make it happen," she said.

Referentin und Referent:

Marianne Weg

Beraterin für Gender Mainstreaming
Wiesbaden, Deutschland

Lars Jalmert

Universität Stockholm, Schweden