Governance in the Field of Public and Gender Policies

Abstract

Governance is a modern procedure in the task of governing which is performed through dialogue, negotiation and elucidation of goals, strengthened by an effective political communication with the different actors involved, who come from public or private sectors or from civil society, positioning themselves in the development process of public policy. As Bassols (Bassols, 2011: p. 16) states, “it is a technique of power that is related to the act of affecting and being affected, if we think of it as a Faucaultian version”. Therefore, governance processes should be regarded as a means towards social transformation and, in particular, towards the transformation of social systems of gender roles. This form of democratic governance would be expressed through institutional changes or, in other words, through changes of the rules and regulations which organize the relationships among the different actors or partners in different settings, especially those relationships between the state and civil society, and those established among the state, market and family. In this sense, changes would open up new opportunities to transform gender roles assessing the implications of public policies for both men and women. This would include legislation and policies in all areas and levels. Therefore, the fact of introducing an approach based on gender in the processes of governance appears to be a strategy to integrate topics of interest and experiences of women and men as an integral dimension of the design, implementation and evaluation of policies in the political, economic and social sphere, to benefit both men and women. Thus, inequality is not perpetuated.