Issues of Governance Contested Strategies for Gender Equity

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the opportunities for and constraints on gender equitable governance in Central and Eastern Europe.¹ It elaborates theoretical concerns and debates about the most propitious strategies to achieve this end. One of the facets of this discussion concerns the distinction between feminist, movement-based campaigns for social justice, and the acceptance of gender equality as a political goal that can be approached bureaucratically, for example by top-down state-led policies such as gender mainstreaming. This theoretical discussion sets the scene for the two subsequent chapters, which present detailed country-based data and analysis on two specific arenas for the implementation of gender equity: mainstream politics (Chapter 3), and civil society mobilization (Chapter 4).