When gender meets quality assurance in higher education: policy innovation, conditions of possibility, and instrument co-optation

Abstract

For decades, several actors and institutions have highlighted gendered power dynamics in (higher) education and have promoted actions and policies to address them. In many contexts, however, policies aimed at mainstreaming gender have often proved ineffective. This is the case in Catalonia’s higher education system, where gender equality policy mandates have been systematically disregarded in the past. In an attempt to reverse this situation, policy entrepreneurs have strategically linked these mandates to quality assurance, aiming to have specific policy instruments for enforcing their implementation and preventing their evaporation. In this article, we critically revisit and examine how this policy came to be, by unpacking the discursive and material conditions of possibility that allowed it to occur at a specific moment and in a specific form. Using the Multiple Streams Framework as a heuristic tool and process-tracing methods, we draw on interviews with key actors involved in the policymaking process, a review of policy documents and other heterogeneous secondary sources to identify such conditions of possibility. The article ends by highlighting the main conclusions and further scrutinizing the tensions between the predominantly technocratic discourse and instruments that characterize quality assurance, and the potentially transformative nature of gender equality initiatives.