Abstract
In the introductory chapter to this volume, we suggest that focussing on social partners representing employees and employers provides important new insights for gender and politics scholarship. Analysing social partners and corporatist processes helps to explain the persistence of gendered inequalities in the labour market and problems in gender equality policy adoption and implementation. Studying social partners is all the more important in the current political context shaped by neo-liberalisation and crises, where traditional gender equality actors have been losing ground and where corporatist power relations are changing. We argue that social partners should be seen as important, although not necessarily benevolent, actors for gender equality with powers to advance and oppose gender equality through collective bargaining and social dialogue. Moreover, corporatist systems, practices and institutions are gendered in their functioning and create gendered effects, for example, by upholding rather than contesting the systemic undervaluation of feminised work.
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Elomäki, A., Kantola, J., Koskinen Sandberg, P. (2022). Gender, Power and Corporatism. In: Elomäki, A., Kantola, J., Koskinen Sandberg, P. (eds) Social Partners and Gender Equality. Gender and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81178-5_1
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