Gender “mainstreaming” is an important concept in feminist politics because it integrates a gendered perspective into all policy‐ and decision‐making. However, while most scholars agree that gender mainstreaming has the potential to transform social relations, to date it has been limited and delivered only marginal benefits for a few women. In the Canadian context, scholars have pointed to several contextual and conceptual issues that limit the transformative potential of gender‐based analysis. While such studies have contributed to our understanding of the impacts of gender mainstreaming, the author suggests that we must also explore the creative or productive dimensions of mainstreaming. When we do so, we see that gender mainstreaming constructs a new form of worker: the “gender expert,” who is then given authority to analyse, monitor and suggest interventions based on “expert analysis.” From this perspective, gender analysis becomes a “technology of rule,” constructing gender experts whose power ultimately goes unscrutinized in the context of the organization, thus obscuring the ways in which gender systems are reproduced or fractured by gender mainstreaming itself. In closing, the author calls for a reorientation of gender mainstreaming, away from an analytic approach that focuses only on the instrumental effects of policies and towards an approach that illuminates both the instrumental and creative impacts of policies.

While there has been considerable attention paid to Canada's anti-woman abuse policy framework, much of this attention has neglected its implications for women's resistance to abuse. This paper attempts to address this gap by using the lens of women's resistance to analyse the anti-woman abuse policy in Canada. I begin by exploring the ways in which the policy framework constructs the 'problem' and considering its implications for women's choice in resistance strategy. Using the Canadian General Social Survey on Victimization (1999), I apply independent samples tests to explore women's (non)usage of various strategies, as it varies by class, race, and ability. I conclude with suggestions for policy reform.

The debate surrounding the transformative potential of gender mainstreaming has revived concerns of co-optation of equality work and resistance first expressed by early feminist public administration scholars. In this article, we explore how gender analysts exercised their agency and carved out spaces within the bureaucracy to articulate and advance a gender focus in policy work. Employing discursive, institutional and relational strategies, gender analysts simultaneously used and pushed back against hierarchical bureaucratic discourses as they operationalized Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) in the federal public bureaucracy. These micro-level acts of resistance, on their own, do not lead to social transformation. However, by creating spaces for feminist knowledge and activism within the state, these local strategies can contribute to the broader feminist agenda.

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Gender mainstreaming (GM) is a strategy used by governments to promote gender equality. It entails integrating gender and intersectional considerations into all aspects of policy work, including policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. However, its success in achieving gender equality and social transformation has been limited. Drawing on implementation research and narrative analysis, this article explores the micro-level dynamics and the local actors that help shape the character and outcome of gender mainstreaming. Using narrative analysis, we explore how GM specialists within the Canadian public service make sense of their role, and we identify the strategies they use to make gender matter in policy work. By examining their stories of isolation, disempowerment, and resistance, we uncover the administrative and political forces that shape not only the “space” for gender work but also the opportunities for individual activism and resistance. These stories convey how, by engaging in these micro-level strategies, GM specialists both challenge and reinscribe, at the macro level, technocratic representations of GM and of policy work in general. We conclude with some reflections on the insights that micro-level analysis and implementation research can bring to the study of gender mainstreaming.