Working for Change

Projectified Politics and Gender Equality

Bibliographic Data

ID12115498
AuthorsAndreas Öjehag‐pettersson (0000-0003-4820-278X, Karlstad University, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume25
Issue3
Pages163-178
Publication date2017-07-03
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0803-8740 • E-ISSN: 1502-394X
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/08038740.2017.1370011
OpenAlexW2765280138
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited23

In this article I argue that the project, a governmental technology that is now widespread and accepted throughout the public sector, is not a neutral tool for implementing policy and conducting politics. Rather, my argument is that this form is intrinsically political in so far as it produces disruptions and sets boundaries for how any given task is to be performed. By mobilizing a set of optical metaphors from feminist theory of difference, I examine organizations that work for gender equality in Swedish regional development and illustrate how the governmental technology of the project reflects, refracts, and diffracts the practices associated with this work. Thus, I argue that if one wishes to understand contemporary gender-equality work, it is reasonable to consider the specific effects that are produced as it passes through the project form. The short empirical illustrations given here indicate, among other things, how the project form functions in some respects as a mirror, and reflects aspects of gender-equality work that are commonly experienced regardless of form or setting, such as encountering resistance. In other respects, the project form refracts gender-equality work, bending it into new directions so that, for instance, securing funds and coming up with new innovative project plans takes precedence over the actual work that respondents feel they should be doing. Finally, the intersection of gender-equality work and the project form also produces diffraction effects, such as the emergence of hybrid consultants. These multi-faceted figures function as evaluators, controllers, activists, and disseminators of knowledge, which makes them simultaneously important to and disdained by the respondents in this study. Thus, it is concluded that the disruptive effects of the project form should be recognized as political and studied more extensively in the future

Argument (complex analysis · Economics · Epistemology · Function (biology · Intersection (aeronautics · Management · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Resistance (ecology · Set (abstract data type · Sociology · Subject (documents · Task (project management · Work (physics · Computer Science · Engineering · European Union Policy and Governance · Gender Studies · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Public Policy and Administration Research

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