GENDER EQUALITY NORMS AND MAINSTREAMING: MEANING-IN-USE AMONG PUBLIC SERVANTS IN CAMBODIA AND RWANDA

Many scholars and practitioners have criticized gender mainstreaming without considering how public servants in developing countries engage with it or the specific ways they understand gender equality, which is the goal of gender mainstreaming. I address this gap through critical frame analysis of structured, open-ended interviews with 145 mid- and upper-level public servants in the Cambodian and Rwandan agriculture and local government sectors. Drawing on the international norm contestation literature and feminist theory, this approach illuminates the dynamics of localizing international gender equality norms and offers a complement to structural explanations for the challenges of institutionalizing commitments to gender equality. In both countries, competition between gender equality and neoliberal growth and governance norms has resulted in dominant conceptions of gender equality as sameness and inclusion, which public servants understood primarily as increasing women’s participation and leadership in the economy and governance, with limited, inconsistent consideration of women’s rights, gender-based violence, inequality in the “private sphere,” and men’s roles in maintaining gender (in)equality. Although Cambodian and Rwandan understandings of gender equality reflected distinct national gender policy mandates, governance styles, and patriarchal norms, there were few differences between men and women or between sectors. Yet, although these normative processes have contributed to policy evaporation – the narrowing of formal policy mandates as they are enacted -- gender mainstreaming has nonetheless become institutionalized in both governments in ways that go beyond “tick the box” exercises. Strikingly, when considering gender equality in ordinary people’s lives, interviewees’ visions emphasized women’s empowerment in both “public” and “private” domains, as well as the need for changes in men’s mindsets. These findings suggest that placing gender equality at the service of economic growth and organizational efficiency, rather than public servants’ narrow understandings of gender equality, is a main constraint to gender policy implementation. Given more explicitly rights-based policy mandates connecting “public” and “private” spheres, public servants in Cambodia and Rwanda and similar countries could be more effective allies in establishing equitable gender norms, rather than roadblocks, as may have been presumed.