Policy When Implementation Stalls

Since governments across the world began creating equal pay laws in the 1970s, policy and progress on the gender pay gap stalled until the 2010s. Despite much research on the challenges of equal pay policy, detailed analysis of policy implementation within countries combined with cross-national analysis across countries has not been undertaken. Policy When Implementation Stalls fills this gap by telling the over 50-year history of equal pay policy in post-industrial democracies through systematic within and cross-country analysis of these policies from pre-adoption through adoption to post-adoption. It uses the Gender Equality Policy in Practice (GEPP) approach and network to analyze equal pay policy implementation in Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Australia, Canada, the UK, the USA, and Croatia, providing an innovative way to assess not only why equal pay policies have been unable to make progress but also how and why the stalled imperative of these policies have recently been broken in some, but not all, of these countries. The story of stalled policy begins in Part I with a chapter on equal pay policy at the EU level. Part II then covers the strong corporatist countries and Part III the countries with weaker corporatist systems. The concluding chapter, in Part IV, conducts a cross-national analysis and contributes to emerging comparative theories of gender equality policy and stalled policy. Policy When Implementation Stalls shows that while gender equality progress is being put into question across the globe, successful policy practice has enabled some countries to break the pattern of stalled implementation. It suggests a recipe for policy success and concrete recommendations to move gender pay equality forward in this resistant area for change.

Isabelle Engeli is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Exeter. Prior to joining Exeter, she worked at the Universities of Bath, Ottawa, and Geneva. She has also been co-editor of several leading Political Science journals in Europe, convened the European Conference of Politics and Gender, and was Vice-President of the International Public Policy Association. Currently, she contributes to the Horizon Europe PUSH*BACK*LASH project and co-convenes the Gender Equality Policy in Practice Network with Amy G. Mazur. Amy G. Mazur is Professor Emeritus at Washington State University, where she worked for 32 years, and Associate Researcher at LIEPP, Sciences Po Paris. She has been co-convening the Gender Equality Policy in Practice network since 2013 with Isabelle Engeli and the Going Global with State Feminism project since 2023. She has been Lead Editor of French Politics, since 2019. From 1995 to 2011, she was co-convener of the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State and has also consulted for the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union, and the Organization of Security and Cooperation.