Dr Rosalind Cavaghan will be Visiting Researcher for GePoCo in semester 2019. She will be teaching an MA course titled Gender and Public Policy in Turbulent Times in Gender Studies at the Tampere University in September. Cavaghan is a key expert on gender policies, feminist political economy, gender mainstreaming. During her previous visit at the Tampere University and the EuGenDem project, she was interviewed and had the following to say about her course:
I will be delivering a masters course called Gender and Public Policy in Turbulent Times. The course draws partially on my own industry experience as a policy consultant and the way my research usually focuses on the sneaky gendering effects of ‘mainstream’ policy.
The course is quite intensive. It will introduce feminist concepts, which we use to analyze how public policy shapes intersectional gender inequalities. We will whip through concepts like intersectionality, gender regimes, and critical policy frame analysis. Then we will apply them to uncover how several ‘mainstream’ areas of policy shape intersectional gender inequalities in EU countries. For example, lack of childcare provision, shapes intersectional hierarchies as demand for cheap reproductive labour within in middle class families, is filled by migrant women. We will also look at how different gender equality policies do and do not work.
At the end, I want students to feel equipped to look at a policy and know that they have the skills to work out what its gender impacts could be and to confidently express their view. The course will train them in this!