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Three Decades of State Feminism and Gender Equality Policies in Multi-governed Spain

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Abstract

Spain’s evolution from an authoritarian regime to a well-established multi-governed democracy in a short period of time, has been accompanied by incredibly rapid social change and a varied (depending on the governmental period), but overall steady, consideration of gender equality as a political priority. This has also led to the rapid development and consolidation of women’s and equality machineries–state feminism–and well-established policies devoted to promoting gender equality over the last three decades, both at national and regional governmental levels. This article aims to present a consolidated policy area which has enough elements to survive and to keep on developing, although in an increasingly fragmented manner, among regions, despite the ongoing economic crisis and the conservative political turn. Based on theories of state feminism and discursive politics, this article analyzes four important elements for understanding this claim and the evolution of national and regional Spanish gender policies and institutions during the last three decades: women’s machinery, the relations between that machinery and women’s and feminist movements, the policy discourses present in gender equality policies, and the policy instruments used by those machineries and policies.

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Acknowledgment

This research was supported in part by grants from the European Commission’s V and VI Framework Research Programme –Mainstreaming Gender Equality MAGEEQ 2003-2005; Quality in Gender Equality Policies QUING 2006-2011- and from the National Research and Innovation Plan -“Análisis de los marcos interpretativos de las políticas autonómicas de igualdad de género en España: un análisis comparado entre Andalucía, Cataluña, Madrid y País Vasco 2005-2008 IM65/04” and “Análisis y evaluación de políticas de igualdad: Violencia de Género, cuidados y representación política en España y en Europa. FEM2012-33117”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    María Bustelo

  2. Departamento de Ciencia Política y de la Administración II, Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología, Campus de Somosaguas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    María Bustelo

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Correspondence to María Bustelo.

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Bustelo, M. Three Decades of State Feminism and Gender Equality Policies in Multi-governed Spain. Sex Roles 74, 107–120 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-014-0381-9

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