Power as a conceptual metaphor of gender inequality? Comparing Dutch and Spanish politics

This chapter explores the question of whether and how power is used as a conceptual metaphor in gender inequality in politics. We analyse to what extent a selection of Dutch and Spanish policy texts on the issue of ‘gender inequality in politics’ refer to power, and if they do so, what metaphors they employ for describing it. The central hypothesis is that these policy texts on gender equality in politics contain conceptualisations on power that might constitute important gendered barriers in the access to power. We further postulate that studying these conceptualisations will reveal important discursive and normative potential barriers to a gender equal distribution of power. In a previous study on gender inequality in politics (Meier et al. 2005), for example, we found that policy texts on the issue often contain a ‘benchmarking fallacy’. This fallacy suggests that gender inequality can be dealt with in terms of numbers, without tackling underlying structural problems. In this chapter, we turn to the issue of whether the concept of ‘power’ is present with respect to gender inequality in policy texts, and further explore the extent to which these texts go beyond the ‘benchmarking fallacy’ of women in politics.