EUROPEAN
EXPRESSION
QUARTERLY
REVIEW ON
EUROPEAN
AFFAIRS
ISSUE 101-102 • April - September 2016 • 2nd - 3rd Quarter 2016
GENDER
EQUALITY
ISSUE 101-102
2nd - 3rd
QUARTER 2016
€ 10
& MAINSTREAMING
Guest editor: Divina Alexiou
Translation of
gender mainstreaming
into
Finnish academia
I
n this article, I discuss the implementation of gender mainstreaming in academic institutions. In Finland, the
Equality Act1 obliges universities to
promote sex equality, which materialises as administrative equality planning with related documents. Since current
policy influences on equality are increasingly
transnational, I read these documents from the
perspective of gender mainstreaming as the
latest transnational strategy. Echoing mainstreaming definitions quite literally, equality
plans increasingly suggest taking ‘equality
questions into account as a penetrating and
central principle’ at all levels, fields and actions,
while ‘The practices and structures of the
administration ought to be developed in a way
that the target of sex equality is included in all
decision making’. Nevertheless, during the
university reform of the 2010s, questions
regarding sex equality were rather marginal in
both public debates as well as in the pursuit of
structural and administrative duties.
The principal of mainstreaming a ‘gender
perspective’ into all policymaking appeared
in transnational agendas in the 1970s in order
to mend shortages of old strategies. It aimed
to shift the focus from women to gender, to
1 Act on Equality between Women and Men 1986
(amendments in 1995 and 2005 added the requirements
of active equality promotion for organizations)
EUROPEAN EXPRESSION • Issue 101-102 • 2nd – 3rd Quarter 2016
Johanna
Lätti
PhD Researcher,
School of Education,
University of
Tampere, Finland
pay attention to power relations and structures
instead of just adding more women and to target
all life spheres instead of just working life.2
However, the policy has been criticised as being
ambiguous towards gender and about equality
and mainstreaming itself.3 Policy actors also place
differential emphasis on the separate components:
For instance, the European Union highlights the
mainstreaming of equal opportunities rather
than a gender perspective.4, 5
From the perspective of domestication, the
implementation of transnational models and
indicators influences local conceptions and
policy actions, but at the same time, they are
always dependent on and adjusted to the old
2 E.g. Morley, L. (2007)
3 Squires, J. (2007). The new politics of gender equality. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
4 See also UNESCO (2013). Priority Gender Equality Action
Plan 2014–2021. United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization.
5 In Finnish, the literal translation of gender mainstreaming
follows the English as sukupuolinäkökulman
valtavirtaistaminen – mainstreaming the perspective of
sex (gender).
The conceptual policy focus
For gender mainstreaming policy, the focus is
on equal opportunities in the working life of
individuals.
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Terminological nuances
Concrete translation of basic concepts is not straightforward.
Finnish, for instance, does not have an equivalent for the word gender.
institutional practices and conditions.6 In this case, they are
also incorporated into visions of the reformed university.
The implementation and interpretation of transnationally
developed equality politics rather fluctuate at local and
organisational levels.7 Thus, the results might diverge from
the original idea. From these starting points and based on
the documentary data of Finnish universities, I raise two
issues regarding the translation of the mainstreaming
principle into the organisational equality agenda.
Firstly, the concrete translation of basic concepts is not
straightforward, and as in many other languages, Finnish
terminological nuances diverge from the English ones.
Finnish, for instance, does not have an equivalent for the
word gender. The word sukupuoli (half of a kin) refers to
the biological dimension of men and women, but it lacks
the distinction between sex and gender in English. Though
sukupuoli does not refer to ‘social sex’, it has increasingly
been made identical to it by the established translation into
‘gender’. Thus, the transnationalisation in Finnish equality
politics is already present in the adoption of core concepts,
while Anglo-American terms have started to replace the
existing vocabulary, which is a challenge for both research
and policy implementation.
On a conceptual basis, gender mainstreaming seems not
to seek to define gender, but rather to assume a universal
interpretation. This has led to confusions about the meaning
of equality between social sexes/genders and whether they
stand for the equality of feminine and masculine features,
roles or expressions despite the physical manifestation of,
for instance, gendered societal fields or values. At the same
time, the universal definition of gender is problematic if the
issues attached to social sex are assumed to be the same.
The whole idea of the division between biological and social
sex and the contents of these categories seems culturally
embedded and relative also in terms of their societal/
organisational impacts.8
6 E.g. Alasuutari, P., & Alasuutari, M. (2012). The domestication of early
childhood education plans in Finland. Global Social Policy, 12(2), 2012,
109–128.
7 Morley, L. (2007). Sister-matic: Gender mainstreaming in higher
education. Teaching in Higher Education, 12(5–6), 607–620.
8 See also Heikkinen, A., Lammela, J., Liétzen, L., Lätti, J. & Virtanen, E.
(2012). Gender mainstreaming: Inclusion or exclusion. In Stolz, S., and
44
Secondly, following these conceptual starting points, I
pay attention to how the actual mainstreaming principle
is received in universities’ equality agenda. Through strict
obedience to legislation, gender mainstreaming in Finnish
universities materialises as the tightening of indicator
policies and detailed requirements for compiling sex-based
statistics. Men and women are compared mainly regarding
pay and representation, which also indicates the priority
of redistributing economic resources and power positions,
especially in terms of increasing the number of women
in leading positions. The statistics are added to existing
administration reports, usually as a separate section.
This reflects the idea of the numeric understanding of
equality, where the goal is to achieve more even numbers.
Here, sex is attached to particular questions. Indicators
and statistics, however, only provide information on
a biological understanding of men and women. This
enables the evaluation of formal and quantitative equality
between biological sex groups, but not of ‘gender’. In
addition, although gender mainstreaming embraces the
shift from women to gender, the female perspective is still
dominant both in gender mainstreaming policy aims and
in organisational implementation.
Still, gender mainstreaming policy is also realised
as recommendations to take equality into account in
all actions. In universities’ equality-related documents,
however, this aim intended for policy making converts into
demands to promote a respectful atmosphere as everyone’s
responsibility in everyday actions, without a specific sex
reference. Rather than being at the centre of policy decisions
or as a process framing policies, the gender mainstreaming
principle turns into recommendations of fair treatment
and behaviour whose problems are solved case specifically.
Here, documents tend to obscure sex rather than reflect it.
In them, the persons should be evaluated with the same
work-related criteria, which are regarded as sex neutral.
The focus is on equal opportunities in the working life of
individuals. Sex distinctions, however, are not only about
the individual but also extend to the group, when seen as
having a concrete form and consequences relating to sexual
Gonon, P. (eds.) Challenges and reforms in vocational education. Aspects
of inclusion and exclusion. Bern: Peter Lang AG. 97–118.
EUROPEAN EXPRESSION • Issue 101-102 • 2nd – 3rd Quarter 2016
reproduction and caretaking responsibilities, for instance
Certain institutions, including universities, are attracted
to gender mainstreaming because adopting its policies
can help them polish their image and appear progressive.
However, current implementation practices depart from
the central principles of gender mainstreaming. On the
one hand, universities’ equality agenda focuses on sex
in particular issues, comparing biological sex groups as
separate indicators. On the other hand, these documents
refer to mainstreaming as common treatment and
behaviour, rather than taking into account the sex/gender
perspective in policymaking and structural development.
The question is whether expressing the ambiguous definition
of the policy of gender mainstreaming exemplifies the ‘weak
concept’,9 serving as an easy strategy for institutions and,
contrary to its ambition, contributing to the vanishing of
sex from policy agendas.
With the example from Finnish academia, I wish to
question some assumptions in implementing transnational
equality strategies in an organisational context. Besides
tightening obligations and practices in equality promotion,
transnational impacts on vocabulary revise the cultural
interpretations of sex/gender and equality. It is up to the
research community to acknowledge both the concepts as
well as their interpretations and the resulting institutional
practices.10 Simultaneously, the underlying premise is
The marketing drawback
Certain institutions
are attracted to gender
mainstreaming because adopting
its policies can help them
polish their image and appear
progressive.
that sex and equality cannot be studied as unrelated
factors, but rather as factors that are both culturally and
institutionally embedded. Thus, the understanding of
gendered (in)equalities requires taking account of not only
transformations in higher education policies, academic
ideals and work, but also changes in private life. Attention
ought to be paid to the concrete mechanisms that are
producing inequalities between different kinds of females
and males in certain organisational contexts.
9 C.f Narotzky, 2007
10 Narotzky, S. (2007). The project in the model. Reciprocity, social capital
and the politics of ethnographic realism. Current Anthropology, 48(3),
403–424.
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