79 78 Travelling Notions of Gender Equality Institutions Andrea Krizsan Andrea Krizsan Travelling Notions of Gender Equality Institutions Equality Architecture in Central and Eastern European Countries Introduction 1 Gender equality bodies are one of three important strategies that make up the „new politics of gender equality“ (Squires 2008). Gender equality institutions are meant to compensate, both in declaratory and in functional terms, the failures of regular policy making and policy implementation processes in protecting women as individuals and as a group. In declaratory terms, they represent a state’s recognition that women require special protection. he policy approach represented by equality institutions may range from individualist to group driven approaches (Ferree 2010). It may imply diferent approaches to addressing discrimination ranging from ad- dressing individual discrimination cases, on the one hand, to addressing the social structural roots of disadvantage and discrimination and empowering women, on the other. Equality institutions can be seen to serve the diferent gender equality visions and strategies of equal treatment and protection against discrimination, diference (meaning special treatment of women) and transformation or mainstreaming (Rees 1998; Squires 1999; Walby 2005) in diferent ways. Equality institutions play a crucial role not only in putting in place diferent equality strategies but also in deining and changing them. As such they are crucial agents in responding to new challenges that arise in the creation of gender equality policy. 1 his paper is based on a common research project and an earlier paper written with Violetta Zentai and Raluca Popa. I am grateful for endless discussions on the topic with both of them. he paper uses research data and reports developed within the framework of the comparative project „Quality in Gender+Equality Policies in Europe“ (QUING). Research reports are available on www.quing.eu. I am indebted to QUING country researchers from East and Central Europe for their enormous and extremely valuable work channeled into this paper. In alphabetical order, they are: Magda Dabrowska, Tamas Dombos, Majda Hrzenjak, Martin Jaigma, Vlasta Jalusic, Erika Kispeter, Ro- man Kuhar, Marja Kuzmanic, Zuzana Ocenasova, Vilana Pilinkaite-Sotirovic, Aivita Putnina, Stanislava Repar, Ingrid Roeder, Elena Stoykova, Melinda Szabo. Europe-wide processes of institutionalization in the equality policy ield have arrived, albeit with some delay, in new Central and Eastern European member states of the EU. In the 1990s, the majority of Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) had fragmented, unenforceable gender equality policies. hese policies had some constitutional backing but largely remained weak due to the absence of related enforcement and implementation mechanisms. Gender equality institutional structures, while in place everywhere in the Western post- industrialized world by the end of the 1980s (Stetson/Mazur 1995), have only started developing in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as of the early 1990s, as they traveled along the diferent waves of international inluence reaching these countries. he irst major wave of institutionalization took place in the 1990s in the context of di ferent UN processes, particularly the Beijing World Confer- ence on Women in 1995. In the early 2000s, EU accession processes coupled with increased NGO mobilization generated a new wave of institutionalization. Understanding processes of gender equality institutionalization in CEECs pro- vides an important perspective on how gender norms traveled to these countries. Understanding these processes shows, on the one hand, the various international factors that had impacted these countries. In addition, it shows the important mediating role played by domestic agents and domestic political and discursive opportunity structures in which they acted that led to a variety of outcomes. he analysis in this chapter covers the ten new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe: eight irst round new member states (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia) and two second round new member states (Bulgaria and Romania). On Equality Institutions A short conceptual discussion of equality institutions is needed in order to un- derstand patterns of institutional transfer in CEECs. In the current European context one has to move beyond discussing women’s policy mechanisms in the traditional Beijing platform for Action 2 sense to discussing equality architectures that imply a set of institutions working in cooperation to meet gender equality 2 Chapter H of the Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 discusses in detail the need for states to establish institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women in order to „design, promote the implementation of, execute, monitor, evaluate, advocate and mobilize support for policies that promote the advancement of women“ (see http:// www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/institu.htm – 13.4.2011).