Equality Governance Via Policy Analysis? ― The Implementation of Gender Impact Assessment in the European Union and Gender-based Analysis in Canada

Gender impact assessment has been both celebrated as a beacon of hope for the cause of gender equality and criticized as being ineffectual. More than twenty years of gender mainstreaming have demonstrated that equality governance with and through impact assessment is an intersectional and still evolving process. Arn T. Sauer’s study examines the instruments of gendered policy analysis and the conditions under which they are being used by the Canadian federal government and the European Commission. Interviews with experts from public administration and instrument designers as well as document analyses reveal benefits and challenges and show that the success of equality governance depends upon whether knowledge about gendered policy and appropriate administrative practices are embedded, embodied, and entrenched in public administration.

Arn T. Sauer is the Research Officer for Gender Mainstreaming at the German Federal Environment Agency. He completed his PhD at the Centre for Transdiciplinary Gender Studies of Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He holds an MA degree in History and Political Science from Humboldt University and a certificate in Interdisciplinary Women and Gender Research from the Technical University of Berlin. Previously, he worked as a research associate at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, as a teaching assistant in the Master’s Program in Gender and Diversity Competence at the Free University Berlin, and as a researcher for the Gender Competency Centre at Humboldt University Berlin.