Governing Austerity: Governance Reforms as Facilitators of Gendered Austerity in Finland

Abstract

This article contributes to literature on gender and austerity by analysing recent neoliberal transformations of governance that have facilitated the adoption of highly gendered austerity measures and constrained the conditions for gender equality policy in Finland. It examines two austerity-enhancing governance reforms: the national implementation of the new European Union (EU) economic governance rules and the OECD-inspired reform of the government’s political steering process. Whereas the EU-reinforced development of a new steering model for public finance has made austerity a permanent state of affairs, the reform of the government’s political steering process has subsumed all other political goals to the fiscal frame and pushed gender equality off the political agenda. Both governance reforms have depoliticised and de-democratised political decision making, making it more difficult to contest the gendered consequences of austerity.