We improve policy making- we incorporate marginalized issues that hegemonic conceptions of "policy relevance" exclude

(Catherine, Policy Discourse Analysis: Negotiating Gender Equity, J. Education Policy 15:2)

Feminist critical policy analysis, assuming that hegemonic policy arenas aremanaged and controlled primarily by, and for, white males, defines how women’ s needs and perspectives are marginalized, so policy analysis must be pursued differently. With patriarchy embedded in state practices `the grounding for research, policy, and action is the political choices and power-driven ideologies and embedded forces that categorize, oppress, and exclude’ (Marshall 1997b: 13). Policy philosophies. When looking at gender, different feminist philosophies undergird policies. Each philosophical stance points to policy implications.13 Power and Politics feminisms recognize that women are placed at the margin of policy arenas, whereas liberal feminisms assume that governments can correct sexism by eliminating barriers to womens’ access to opportunity and `Women’s Ways’ feminisms focus on women’ s different values and choices and socialization. Increasingly, feminist philosophies incorporate sophisticated understanding of how race, sexuality and class biases are intertwined in gender regimes. They further recognize the error of essentializing women, putting all women in a group (e.g. in policies that suppose that equity for women can be doled out simplistically). Thus, analysis of GEP must identify debates and choices among philosophies. The special nature of equity policy. Any policy focus on gender, race, and class inequities redistributes goods and benefits; such policies take away the ensconced and institutionalized privileges.14 Resistance and backlash will be fierce as policy is proposed and as it implemented. Analysing discourse in challenges to hegemony. Policy studies that focus on discourse ± the ways words and symbols are mobilized in power plays in policy formulation ± can identify ideological politics (Ball 1990). But women and women’ s needs are kept out of public discourse (Pateman and Grass 1987, Eisenstein 1993, Blackmore 1989: 11, Marshall 1997b). So, when looking for the ideological politics and the discourses surrounding GEP activity, one must look at the margin of the mainstream policy arena. The evidence will appear as counter-narratives, among counterpublics: `members of subordinated groups who invent and circulate counterdiscourse to formulate opposition interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs’ (Fraser 1994: 117). Such politics occur more often in micro-interactions, outside of legislative bodies, and in non-official documents that challenge current governmental practices than in traditional political arenas. Education policy directs schools, as major socialization instruments, in curriculum, testing, governance ± to reinforce the hegemonic view. Parents and educators cannot see the limitations of stereotyped views of masculinity and femininity. Instances of girls and women lowering their aspirations because of the informal and formal curricula in schooling are invisible problems; they are `non-events and areas of silence’ (Anderson 1989). They are not seen as legitimate issues; hegemony places gender issues at the margin, or belonging to the private sphere, where family, emotion, nurturance and relationships belong.15 Words, labels, and symbols are manipulated so that GEP proposals may be viewed as irrelevant, impractical, incompetent, inefficient, irrational and silly. Thus gender/schooling issues may be labelled unimportant, and asserted by marginal groups. Thus, GEP analysis must ask: What were the counter-narratives and -publics? What happened at the margin? What discourse politics occurred? How did gender equity emerge as a public issue, a real event, unsilenced? Analytic questions, then, are expanded to focus on:What feminisms framed policy development? How did counternarratives and counterpublics become more mainstream, noticed, visible participants, unsilenced? As one Australian activist said: `making people talk about gender . . . with different groups in key positions forcing that dialogue will get people aware and making decisions they wouldn’ t otherwise have made.’ Analysis for GEP, then, must incorporate feminist debates, politics from themargin, and discourse politics while benefiting from more traditional concepts, like `policy windows.’ (128-9)