Gender Mainstreaming as Democratic Innovation

Feminist democratic innovations in institutional politics are ‘processes or institutions’ aimed at improving the quality of democracy by reimagining governance through more intersectionally inclusive and participatory policies and politics. Gender mainstreaming can act as feminist democratic innovation when it questions existing policy paradigms to address the claims, rights, and knowledge of formerly excluded or marginalised gender subjects and involve them in policy processes. This includes challenging the idea that policies are gender-neutral, integrating feminist knowledge into administrative processes such as budgeting and policy impact assessment, transforming institutional structures through equality machinery, and promoting transparency and accountability towards civil society. A window-dressing implementation, resistance in the policy process, the bureaucratisation and depoliticisation of the feminist project, and the prioritisation of gender over other intersecting structures of discrimination limit its capacity to act as a democratic innovation. Promising feminist democratic innovations in gender mainstreaming and intersectionality are illustrated with local cases in Spain.