Empowered by Design: Decentralization and the Gender Policy Trifecta

by Meg Rincker

Overview

In her probing book, Empowered by Design, Meg Rincker asks, Under what conditions will decentralization lead to women’s empowerment in countries around the globe? Using three case studies—the United Kingdom, Poland, and Pakistan—she shows how decentralization reforms create new institutional offices as power shifts from the national level to a meso-tier level, which is located between the national government and local municipalities. These shifts impact a country’s political, administrative, and fiscal reforms as well as women’s representation. 

Rincker argues that this shift should be inclusive of women—or at least lead more women to participate in institutions—but this is not always the case. She indicates that three conditions, “the gender policy trifecta,” need to be met to achieve this: legislative gender quotas, women’s policy agencies, and gender-responsive budgeting at the level of governance in question. Rincker's innovative research uses original comparative data about what women want, quantitative cross-national analyses, and interviews with women’s organization leaders and politicians to show how cross-institutional policymaking can empower women.  

Rincker’s fine-grained analysis makes a significant contribution to the study of representation and gendered implications of decentralization, as well as how representatives go about understanding and aggregating our diverse policy preferences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439913963
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2017
Edition description:	1
Pages:	210
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Meg Rincker is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University Northwest.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Part I

1 Three Guiding Questions about Decentralization and Women's Empowerment 5

2 Decentralization and Gender Inequality in the Absence of the Gender Policy Trifecta 30

Part II

3 Poland: One Node of the Gender Policy Trifecta 55

4 Pakistan: Two Modes of the Gender Policy Trifecta 78

5 The United Kingdom: Three Nodes of the Gender Policy Trifecta 106

Part III

6 Global Assessment of the Gender Policy Trifecta 131

Appendix 1 Hybrid Survey-Structured Interview Method 151

Appendix 2 Sample Survey Questionnaires 155

Appendix 3 Women's Descriptive Representation (%) in Decentralized Poland, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom 187

Appendix 4 Policies and Events Directly Affecting Women in Poland, 1993-2014 189

Appendix 5 Policies and Events Directly Affecting Women in Pakistan, 1973-2013 191

Appendix 6 Policies and Events Directly Affecting Women in the United Kingdom, 1997-2014 195

References 199

Index 219