A Southern European Gender Regime?

Abstract

How can we understand differences in the gender regime of
Southern European states? What explains the different
trajectories of gender regimes? Spain and Italy are often lumped together as belonging to the domestic or conservative model
because of their shared legacy of authoritarianism and the
familialistic nature of their welfare state, which entrenches unequal
gender relations and restricts women’s access to the public sphere.
Howeverin the last decades the two countries have shown signs of
hybridization and have become increasingly dissimilar, with Spain
moving towards a more public form, while in Italy the pace of
change has been much slower, and in the direction of an even
greater privatization of its gender regime.
We argue that polity and civil society processes are a crucial
“engine” of change of gender regimes.

Full text

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H
A Southern European
Gender Regime?
by Alba Alonso, Rossella Ciccia and Emanuela
Lombardo
Spain and Italy are oen lumped together as belonging to the domestic or
conservative model of gender regimes. However, in the last decades the two
countries have shown signs of hybridization and have become increasingly
dissimilar. Credit: Granata92 /Wikimedia Commons.
February 25, 2022
ow can we understand dierences in the gender regime of
Southern European states? What explains the dierent
trajectories of gender regimes? Spain and Italy are oen lumped

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together as belonging to the domestic or conservative model
because of their shared legacy of authoritarianism and the
familialistic nature of their welfare state, which entrenches unequal
gender relations and restricts women’s access to the public sphere.
However, in the last decades the two countries have shown signs of
hybridization and have become increasingly dissimilar, with Spain
moving towards a more public form, while in Italy the pace of
change has been much slower, and in the direction of an even
greater privatization of its gender regime.
We argue that polity and civil society processes are a crucial
“engine” of change of gender regimes. Dynamics between polity
and civil society have been analyzed by the literature on state
feminism, in which studies of Western post-industrial democracies
have explored the extent to which state feminism promotes the
democratic and substantial representation of women’s interests,
and the relevance of alliances between feminist movements and
women’s policy agencies for gendering policy debates. Features of
the political party system, institutional legacies, constellations of
actors in favor and against gender equality, the role of organized
religion, women’s political representation, and prevailing societal
ideas about gender roles complement the role of state feminism
and the women’s movement, by creating specific configurations of
interacting factors that produce variations in the trajectories of
gender regimes.
Our study challenges the existence of a Southern European gender
regime model that fits all countries from this area. The analysis of
trajectories of gender equality policies in Italy and Spain in the
2000s, with reference to former legacies of institutionalization of
gender equality, shows that the two Southern European countries
cannot be lumped together under the same model because they
significantly diverge in their gender regime: while the Spanish
gender regime has become increasingly public, moving between
social democratic-progressive and neoliberal-conservative forms
depending on the color of the party in government, the Italian
gender regime remains more domestic and conservative.
Dynamics in polity and civil society

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Variations in the gender regime are crucially aected by dynamics
within and between the polity and civil society domains. Key factors
that allow our assessment of the gender regime in Italy and Spain in
the polity are: 1) a political party system which is more hostile in
Italy than in Spain, given the strength of mainstream center-right
parties in Italy; the presence of center-le parties more proactive
on gender equality in Spain; and the growing strength of radical
right populist parties – stronger and with governmental roles in Italy
from the 1990s, but only now emerging in Spain; 2) the depth of
democracy: women’s political representation is very low in Italy –
stuck at 11% until 2018 – as compared to Spain, where it has been
around 40% since 2007; 3) the interference of organized religion in
politics: the Vatican and its civil society and political allies have a
more direct access to the state and detrimental eect for equality
in Italy than in Spain; 4) state feminism and velvet triangles (i.e.
interactions between policy-makers, feminist academics and
experts, and feminist movements): Italy as compared to Spain
presents a weak gender equality institutionalization and weaker
alliances between feminist activists, legislators, femocrats, and
academics; 5) federalism is a progressive force in Spain, triggering
policy innovation in gender equality among the regions, and
between regions and the central state, while this is not the case in
Italy; 6) familism as a feature of the welfare system has remained
stronger in Italy compared to Spain.
For civil society, crucial factors that aect our assessment are the
following: 1) the type of women’s movement: in Italy, being based
more on dierence than equality and less state-oriented than in
Spain, where the presence of femocrats and feminists within le
parties has ensured continuity in gender equality policy
development; 2) the strength of anti-gender movements and their
support from formal political actors: this is greater in Italy than
Spain, with important ties between movements and radical right-
populist parties in government, while in Spain this political
connection is a more recent phenomenon; 3) knowledge: while
Spain’s public opinion evolves towards progressive ideas about
gender roles and greater secularization, in Italy conservatism in
political culture and society prevails.

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Overall, factors that push for gender equality policies have
exercised a greater pressure towards a public gender regime in
Spain, while conservative and anti-gender forces in both polity and
civil society have determined a more hostile context for the
development of a public and progressive gender regime in Italy. The
permanence of conservative ideas about gender roles in the family,
employment, and politics influences the permanence of traditional
family structures in Italy, while Spain is moving towards a dual-
earner model. Organized religion has a stronger detrimental
influence on Italy’s gender regime too, with the greater
secularization of Spanish society as compared to the Italian having
allowed Spain greater progress in gender equality.
This comparative study has reached conclusions on the divergent
gender regimes of Italy and Spain through a focus on the interplay
between the polity and civil society domains as engines of change.
Future studies will need to take into account interaction with other
crucial domains, such as the economy, violence, knowledge, and
issues related to body and sexuality, to provide a more
comprehensive understanding of the dierences between
Southern European gender regimes that challenge general, less
accurate, typologies.
Alba Alonso, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Rossella Ciccia, University of Oxford, UK and member of ISA
Research Commiees on Economy and Society (RC02), and
Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy (RC19)
Emanuela Lombardo, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain,
<elombardo@cps.ucm.es>