Territorial Dynamics and Gender Equality Policies in Spain

Resumo

State architectures are not neutral in their potential for the adoption and effective implementation of gender equality policies and, more broadly, for women’s empowerment. As it has been argued, «states make gender through policies, laws, practices, spending patterns, judicial decisions, and discourses about how women and men should act» while simultaneously «gender makes states» in both reproducing and challenging male dominance1. In an attempt to explain whether federalism is a barrier to or an opportunity for women’s equality-seeking strategies, the federal-unitary dichotomy was the focus of initial debates on the relationship between gender and state architectures. More recently, other factors have increasingly been examined and institutional approaches have gained momentum, thus leading to more complex explanatory frameworks. Factoring institutional settings in studies of state architectures allows us to address questions such as how formal structures and informal rules, including territorial structures, may advance or constrain women’s interests and strategies as well as under what conditions they are (dis)advantageous to feminist projects2. Some territorial dynamics have been claimed to produce various forms of inequalities and disadvantages for women’s interests. Firstly, federalism may bring about asymmetry in the provision of public services at the sub-state level and complicate the development of coordinated and integrated state-wide policies.3 Secondly, the exis