What is Feminist Policy Studies?

Coming into its own in the mid-1990s, feminist policy studies (FPS) has since emerged as a diverse field of study that adopts feminist approaches to all dimensions of public policy. This includes how policy gets made and by whom, as well as the content and context, gaps, and oversights of public policy and policymaking (e.g., Lombardo et al 2012; Paterson and Scala 2015). Unlike main(male)stream approaches to policy, FPS emphasizes power in policy. And unlike that textbook definition of policy, discussed in the [What is Public Policy?] explainer, FPS troubles the public-private dichotomy, exploring how the public and private are co-constituted and examining how “the personal is political”.

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Just as there is no one way to be a feminist, there is no one way to study policy from a feminist perspective. Feminist approaches to policy studies span epistemological and methodological spectra, including positivism and quantitative or mixed methods (e.g., McBride and Mazur 2010), critical theory (e.g., Fraser 1997), interpretivism (e.g., Verloo and Lombardo 2007) and post-structuralism (e.g., Bacchi and Goodwin 2016). Increasingly, however, feminist approaches to policy studies from across the epistemological spectrum are embracing intersectional analysis, aiming to expose and understand the role of policy in creating, sustaining, or transforming interlocking structures of oppression (e.g., Hankivsky and Jordan-Zachery 2019; see also McCall 2005; Fonow and Cook 2005).

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Despite their diversity, feminist approaches to policy studies share some similarities, as we have previously identified (Paterson and Scala 2015, 483-484). These include:

-      Opposition to domination and marginalization

-      Commitment to exposing and remedying inequality. For some, this has resulted in process-focused analyses that illuminate the roles of political institutions, actors and policy processes that improve policy outcomes (e.g., McBride and Mazur 1995, 2010; Mazur 2001, 2002; McBride 2001; Outshoorn 2004; Woodward 2004; Haussman and Sauer 2007; Strid et al. 2013). For others, this has resulted in content-focused analyses, which assess the degree to which policies sustain or challenge gender inequality and marginalization more generally (e.g. Bacchi 1999; McPhail 2003; Verloo 2007; Verloo and Lombardo 2007; Lombardo et al. 2009; Lombardo and Rolandsen Agustin 2011).

-      The use of research methods that nurture experiential knowledge and challenge the hierarchy of orthodox scientific methods (e.g., Hawkesworth 1994, 2010; Marshall 1997; Tuck 2008).

-       Encourage reflexivity or an interrogation of the researcher’s role in “ontological politics” (Mol 1999; Bacchi and Goodwin 2016). These interventions direct researchers to interrogate and address their own assumptions and presuppositions regarding policy problems and social groups(e.g., Bacchi 2009). This has also required close attention to the social location of both researchers and participants and a heightened call for intersectional approaches that enable deep understanding of social contexts (e.g., Fonow and Cook 2005; Manuel 2006, 2019; Hankivsky et al 2014; Walby et al. 2012; Hancock 2013; Strid et al. 2013).

-      Feminist approaches are explicitly committed to emancipatory research, politics, and social justice.

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